Doing Hard Time: Developing Real-Time Systems with UML, Objects, Frameworks, and Patterns [With *]

A fantastic description of how to apply UML and OO process to Embedded and Real-Time systems. Bruce does a great job of keeping the material informative and interesting with concrete "real world" examples. I especially enjoyed the discussion of process and which UML artifacts are used in what phase of development and why. This book has quickly become required reading in my organization. If you want a UML book that provides "how to" knowledge without the doctoral dissertation, then this is for you.

Even though this book focuses on object-oriented software development for real-time systems, I am certain that it can serve as a valuable source of insight for all developers - including those working on systems outside the targeted area or using alternative approaches. It is very comprehensive and provides clearly written discussions on many subjects which are generally not properly treated in other software development texts. Examples of such topics are: frameworks, patterns, statecharts, threads, architectural design and safety requirements. The author's conversational style combined with effective use of humour ensure that reading the more than 700 pages of this book will not be regarded as "doing hard time" but rather as an enjoyable experience.

Everything I have said for RT UML holds for this book also: a MUST HAVE for embedded developers. This book adds to the previous one from Douglass a lot of material (it definitely includes the material presented in that one) but the main advantage for me is the plethora of design patterns for real-time described. Since this is a very large book, it does not prove as easy to read through, but the additional material is definitely worth it. Finally, another plus point is that the accompanying CD includes a lightweight demo of Rhapsody - the tool from I-Logix that amongst other things claims full code generation. END

Wow! And I thought Real-Time UML was good! Doing Hard Time is everything Real-Time UML is plus so much more. I really liked the easy-to-read but in-depth coverage of the "hard stuff" of real-time and embedded systems.What's special about this book: The coverage of safety critical systems is unparalleled -- safety explained in terms of design patterns and key concepts and how to do this using object methods. The development process in Chapter 4 on ROPES shows how to effectively apply UML to think about, design and construct real-time systems. Chapter 11 explains the difficult concepts of timeliness and gives ways to guarantee schedulability. I've looked at other books on that topic and they're filled with really ugly math which makes for a difficult read. This book explains those concepts in an easy going way. The chapters on behavioral patterns covers "design patterns" for wiring together state machines to solve commonly occurring behavioral issues. I also really liked the chapter on real-time frameworks; it really clarified a number of things that confused me. This book has information that is either not available elsewhere or, if it is, is very hard to track down and is very opaque read. I've read a lot of books in this genre -- and this is clearly the best. I can hardly wait to apply it on my current project.