Does the Entire Embedded Software Development Process Have its Priorities Backwards: Introducing Data-Centric Development (DCD)

Does the Entire Embedded Software Development Process Have its Priorities Backwards: Introducing Data-Centric Development (DCD)

The time is coming when every time you hear “Data-Centric Development” you may think of Encirq. DCD is a design approach that makes data management - including definitions, structures, relations and manipulators - the focus of the process. Encirq believes that while C and other procedural languages are great for building functions that drive-event driven systems, they are less efficient at managing data. Why is this important? How much data management do typical embedded systems carry out? According to several case studies that VDC has seen where developers classify their lines of code by functionality, over 50% of application code is associated with data management. In some applications it can be 70%.

Encirq’s answer is to leverage Oracle’s PL/SQL, a high-level language that more succinctly manipulates and manages data than current procedural languages. ANSI C can be generated from the PL/SQL and then compiled with other application code. The result should be:

· Faster development time – PL/SQL requires many fewer lines of code
· Smaller code size – PL/SQL is more efficient per line of code for managing data
· More portable code – The data management layer is abstractive from the system
· Higher quality – Fewer opportunities to make mistakes

The problem, of course, is that developers are typically not trained to be data centric in their process. That, coupled with a lack of players in the embedded market, puts the evangelism mantel squarely on Encirq. As part of that evangelism, the company published an article in the November Embedded Systems Design (formerly Embedded Systems Programming)