June 11, 2012 -- Model-driven development (MDD) is a growing trend within the embedded computing world including safety-critical industries such as defense and avionics. While some modeling work is often involved in the software-development process, the key differences are that specialized modeling tools are used and that the resulting model directly determines how the code is implemented.

In the past, MDD was unable to compete in either reliability or efficiency with manually generated code. However, advances in modeling tools have reduced, and in some cases eliminated, the gaps between hand-generated code and code generated from a model. In addition, supporters of MDD cite as advantages its visual approach, simplification of complex systems, potential for component reuse, and overall flexibility.

Despite MDD’s popularity in safety-critical industries, companies that use it often face challenges in achieving safety certification. In part, these challenges are due to the age of the most popular safety standards.

By John Thomas and Jared Fry. (Thomas and Fry are field application engineers for LDRA Technology)