S O FT WA R E
Autosar
“Artop” – A New and Open Platform for Autosar Tools Despite of all the impressing progress the Autosar tool landscape is still a world of closed environments. The integration of user specific or 3rd party tools is close to impossible in the real world. An open platform approach is now being made by BMW CarIT, Continental, PSA and Geensys: The involved companies founded the open “Artop” user group that makes an Eclipse based infrastructure platform available free of charge with a high level of base functionality. “Artop” stands for “Autosar Tool Platform“. Geensys describes the options from the view of a tool manufacturer.
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1 Introduction One of the most important targets of Autosar is to achieve a high reusability of software components (SWC) to better manage and control the ever increasing amount of code. Not only to reduce cost, but enhance innovation: developers gain more time for creativity – time that is curr rently spend on useless repetitive tasks. By the definition of standard interr faces for Basic-Software-Modules (BSW) interchangeability is being achieved for modules from different vendors. This also helps to increase innovation. Based on the architecture of Autosar and the clear distinction between HW dependent and independent BSW modules a high share can be reused without the necessity for adoption to a new platform or control unit (ECU). The exchangeability of tools extensibility of the tool environment is not possible today. However, this is mandatory to implement the Autosar methodology. The concept of a continuous model based development requires a universal tool chain.
2 Autosar Tools based on Eclipse A first step into the reuse of base functionality for development tools is Eclipse
that has been proven for many years now. The concept of an infrastructure platform that is progressed and developed by the community offers many advantages. Eclipse is also a very good platform for Autosar tools and is already being used as such by many tool manufacturers. The focus for Geensys was never to simply build a few tools directly on Eclipse, but to build a framework that will serve as the platform for the complete toolchain itself. It was possible to reuse a number of the well known components like the Eclipse Metamodel Framework (EMF) to make the development easier and to speed it up as well. The functionality was extended to create an “Autosar Tool Development Kit” (ATDK). The ATDK includes XSD compliant serialization (reading and writing of Autosar XML files), rule based validation, tree view, editors and more. Alike to the EMF the “ATDK” enables the access to the Autosar model via its APIs for the development of tools such as Authoring Tool, Verification Tool, ECU Configuration Tool, RTE Generator, Simulator and more. Via Java scripting it is possible to make user extensions. It was clear from the beginning on that the relatively generic approach of Eclipse will not be sufficient to allow for the creation of tools with a high level of interoperability.
The Authors
Ingo Bruse is Sales Director D.A.CH. at Geensys in Munich (Germany).
Pascal Gula is Autosar Builder Product Marketing Manager at Geensys in Paris (France).
Dr. Stephan Eberle leads the Artop development at Geensys in Paris (France).
Figure 1: Layer overview of “Artop” ATZelektronik 01I2009 Volume 4
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S O FT WA R E
Autosar
Figure 2: Function overview of “Artop”
3 Artop User Group The Artop user group is a group of companies with a special interest in Autosar tools. Artop is an acronym and stands for „Autosar Tool Platform“. The target of this group is to create an open infrastructure platform that includes all base functionality that every tool requires to have. These functions however represent no competitive advantage to the individual manufacturer. The license to use this platform will be given out free of charge based on the „ASL“ (Artop Software License) which is identical to the „EPL“ (Eclipse Public License) in a large degree. As Autosar contains confidential information Artop can be made available only to licensed Autosar users. Every Autosar member can become a member of the new Autosar Tool Platform and is not associated with any cost. Depending on how one defines its position to Artop there are three differr ent types of memberships: Design Member, Contributing Member and Early Adopter. In particular for the Early Adopter there is no formal membership process other than registering on the Artop website (www.artop.org) to gain access to a download to get familiarized with the Artop platform. The founding members BMW Car IT, Continental, Geensys and PSA are registered as Design Members. Just like Eclipse it is not the aim of the new Autosar Tool Platform to make a free tool chain available. The target is to create the foundation for a strong tool market – not to prevent it. Through the creation of such an open platform the tool manufacturers can focus on the tools itself and creating the 20
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features that will give the competitive advantages. Similar to Eclipse on which Artop is technically based, Figure 1, the ongoing development effort will be carr ried out by the community. Since October 27th the new Autosar Tool Platform is available with the release candidate 1 and can be tested by all its members.
4 Technical Operation of Artop The Autosar subject is quite complex, but also very well defined and structured. This opens up the chance to implement an infrastructure platform that contains all the base functionality that is required to enable the interoperability of tools from different vendors. As already mentioned above this requires a scope of base functionality the goes far beyond what Eclipse can offer. As an example: To save and exchange date Autosar defines an XML based format. To work with the model it must be first loaded into memo-
ry and will be changed into a proprietary in memory format. To access this inforr mation with the tool of a different vendor the data must be saved again to disk and reloaded into memory. It is plain to see that the risk of data loss is huge. Arr top offers a coherent in memory model that is based on Autosar Meta Model to help prevent such problems. Figure 1 gives an overview of the diff ferent layers in the new Autosar Tool Platform. The Artop layer is based on Eclipse the bottom layer. Both of these layers are available free of charge in source code and are developed by its respective user groups. Every tool manufacturer can base its commercial tools on the Artop layer. These are the tools with feature that an Autosar developer is interested in (Authoring Tool, Configuration Editor, ECU Extract, RTE Generator et cetera). As Artop is an open platform the developer can chose to use tools from different vendors. If particular tools should not be available on the market as of the shelf products it is possible to either build own tools or to involve a 3rd party company to build this tools and integrate into the tool environment. Currently Artop supports the Autosar release 3.0. More functions will be integrated in the future. Some of the current most important functions, Figure 2, are: – Autosar Meta Model – the Meta Model is based on the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) and is implemented in Java. Currently version 3.0 is supported, but more Autosar version will be implemented in the future. – Serialization – the coherent In-Memory model defines how data is loaded
Figure 3: The “Artop” layer is split into two layers: the Autosar Layer (AAL) that incorporates Autosar IP and the Eclipse Complementary layer (ECL); this layer does not include any Autosar specific IP
Figure 4: Generic configuration Editor of an “Artop” based Autosar tool
into memory (de-serialize) and written back to file (serialize). – Work Space Management – manages Autosar models that are spread over several XML files. The Artop workk space management is integrated into the Eclipse workspace management and enables reading and writing of different file formats. – Validation Engine – Enables the validation of the Autosar models based on user defined rules and errors will be flagged up. Artop currently already offers a large number of Services – APIs and PlugIn’s – that are necessary for the tool development and more will be introduced in the future. The new platform is split into two layers, Figure 3. The Artop Autosar layer (AAL) consists of Autosar specifications and represents intellectual properr ty of Autosar. Therefore the code containing this information can be made available only to licensed Autosar users. The Eclipse Complementary Layer (ECL) contain only components that are required for tool development, but represents no intellectual property of Autosar and can therefore be shared with others. It is in fact a target to hand as much as possible to Eclipse directly at a later time. The new Autosar Tool Platform is not a new development, but is based on components that have been donated by its members to the user group. This is also
true for the already mentioned “ATDK”. Only by this practical approach it was possible to create a complete platform within a few months. Most of these components have been used in the field already for a long time and proved them self. This is how typical teething problems have been avoided. First Artop based tools are already on the market today, Figure 4.
building on existing components Artop is very close to the Autosar world and the first tools are already available. Version 1.1 will be released in March 2009 and will incorporate a number of new functions. Some of them are model validation, code generation, command line interface and a Meta model Extender. O
5 Roundup and Outlook The demand „everything from a single source“ is not the optimal solution. In fact it is contrary to the Autosar philosophy. Moreover it only exists as there was no open infrastructure platform in the past. Artop 1.0 opens the possibility to overcome exactly this problem. Users can select the optimal tools from a pool of tools that are the best solution for the task. If the tools do not exist they can develop the tools. Tool manufacturer can focus on their core competency and do not need to invest time in the development of an infrastructure platform. Based on the structure of the Artop user group members can participate actively in the future development of the new platform. It is not the target of Artop to build tools that are free of charge. The target is through the creation of the platt form to help build such a tool market. By ATZelektronik 01I2009 Volume 4
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