Evaluating the benefit of modeling notations on the quality of PLC-programming

Software development in process automation has many deficiencies in procedures, notations and tool support. As a result, modern software engineering concepts and notations, like object oriented approaches or UML, are not wide spread in this field. Hence, drawbacks regarding start-up times, additional costs and low software quality are immense. This paper will evaluate the benefit of modeling as a design step prior to coding, regarding cognitive paradigms. Two modeling notations (UML and ICL) will be compared analyzing their impact on the quality of automation software written in IEC 61131.      «

Software development in process automation has many deficiencies in procedures, notations and tool support. As a result, modern software engineering concepts and notations, like object oriented approaches or UML, are not wide spread in this field. Hence, drawbacks regarding start-up times, additional costs and low software quality are immense. This paper will evaluate the benefit of modeling as a design step prior to coding, regarding cognitive paradigms. Two modeling notations (UML and ICL) wil...     »