Function Net Modeling with UML-RT: Experiences from an Automotive Project at BMW Group

Abstract

This paper presents the function net modeling approach that has been developed within an automotive project at BMW Group aimed at software development for electronic control units. This modeling approach provides a graphical, quite abstract representation of a (typically large) set of functions to be realized in software or hardware. Function net models are described in UML-RT, a dialect of the UML. They only represent structural information, where two architectural views are precisely separated: the logical view uses capsule structure diagrams of UML-RT in order to model independent of (later) HW/SW design decisions. Design decisions are taken in the technical view using UML-RT’s component and deployment diagrams. The development of function net models is tightly integrated within several activities of the overall system development process: with requirements engineering, with behaviour modeling and code generation as well as with version and configuration management.