Telelogic Modeling Tools Can Ease Development Life Cycles

Enterprise developers increasingly have had to adjust to ever-shorter technology cycles. While the surge of programming environments, languages and middleware products has created enormous pressure on developers to become more versatile, productivity has not increased that much. In fact, the gap between productive knowledge and technological breakthroughs to support the expanded knowledge is widening.

Part of the reason behind the widening gap is that development life cycles are becoming more complex and developers and designers are taking longer to build systems, due primarily to a plethora of development tools, enterprise software and methodologies. More iteration is now required between each stage of development to minimize defects. However, the longer the iterations and project adjustments take, the more likely defects will occur because the increased project length increases the chance that developers will miss giving accurate and timely feedback to other team members.

MARIO MOREJON Technical Editor

Telelogic AB aims to reduce some of the complexity in development life cycles by providing several tools that manage the requirements of gathering data, designing code and overall development. The vendor recently unveiled version 1.2 of its UML modeling tool called DOORS/Analyst, which supports UML 2.0 and integrates with Telelogic's TAU/Architect 2.3 and TAU/Developer 2.3.

DOORS/Analyst 1.2 tracks architectural and design models accurately, and now is more capable of synchronizing business requirements when changes are made to code or a design in Telelogic's TAU tools. UML 2.0 also now supports activity diagrams, interaction overview diagrams, component diagrams and deployment diagrams.

DOORS/Analyst uses several diagrams, symbols and pictures to represent requirements visually. As business users gather functional requirements and begin separating activities, DOORS/Analyst helps designers start building sequence and class diagrams. To speed this process, the software allows designers to reuse diagrams and code from other applications.

By relying on UML, developers and architects can establish formal models that describe requirements and business processes. Once a process is developed, TAU/Developer can generate code and build and test applications. The code generated will approximate the original requirements, but ultimately it is up to the developers to insert all the business logic and algorithms.

Through DOORS/Analyst, individual developers lagging behind because of code changes no longer will affect the overall project as long as all team members synchronize changes in previous stages. Since DOORS/Analyst and TAU tools are integrated, business analysts as well as architects will not be left in the dark when extra functionality is added to an application during a development cycle.

DOORS/Analyst is priced at $2,395 per node, while TAU/Architect and TAU/Developer each have a price tag of $6,095.

Telelogic does not offer dedicated solution provider technical support lines; however, in some instances, partners can speak to a senior channel manager for support. The company participates in joint business calls and marketing efforts, but most of its channel services are in the form of sales training and Webinars for solution providers.

Telephone technical support is offered to all partners. The vendor said the solution provider margin is highly negotiable. The company recently launched a referral program to provide better commissions for solution providers that recruit new customers.

Telelogic also sells a version of TAU/Developer based on the C programming language, targeted at embedded systems developers. This tool works with leading industry realtime operating systems and chips.

Programming embedded systems is one of the fastest-growing trends in IT, but it is also one of the most difficult to conquer. In an embedded application, factors such as logical I/O ports, circuit design and memory play a crucial role in the development cycle. With those constraints, developers often end up having to separate code between business requirements and hardware intricacies. Without a tool like TAU/Developer, large development teams are bound to make several iterations of a project at each development stage, thus increasing the odds for mistakes.

However, because this version is a general C-driven environment, it does not target hardware-specific code such as interrupts, pins or any integrated circuitry. The only way to marry browser logic and hardware-specific logic is to abstract code and add it to diagrams as developers identify new constraints. The tool helps developers see the differences between business requirements and the chip logic, but it does not abstract the hardware layer.

Because TAU/Developers can synchronize with DOORS/Analysts, business analysts can track the progress of developers and even separate diagrams that implement the hardware layer from the original specifications.

CHANNEL PROGRAM SNAPSHOTS
> DOORS/ANALYST
COMPANY: Telelogic AB
Irvine, Calif.
(949) 830-8022
www.telelogic.com
DISTRIBUTORS: Direct from vendor
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Note: Vendors can earn up to five stars for technical merit and five for their channel program. If the average of these two scores is four stars or greater, the product earns CRN Test Center Recommended status.