Towards Configurable Conformance Checks of PLC Software with Company-specific Guidelines

In machine and plant engineering, ensuring a short time-to-market to stay competitive in the global market requires planned reuse of control software. Modularity is a key enabler for the reuse of software parts in a different application, i.e., within a different project. Thereby, dependencies between modules play an essential role in software modularity and, thus, its reusability. Especially data exchange between modules via global variables (referred to as indirect data exchange) leads to hidden dependencies potentially hindering planned reuse. Currently, there are only a few general best practices for control software design available. Thus, companies define their own programming guidelines tailored to their application domain, the used development platforms and the software development team structure. However, means for checking the software's conformance to these programming guidelines are limited and violations might decrease reusability. Therefore, this paper presents a rule-based, configurable analysis concept for indirect data exchange, which considers company-specific programming guidelines. The analysis concept is prototypically implemented and successfully evaluated with a demonstrator's control software and an industrial software project. Moreover, the concept's industrial applicability is confirmed in an expert interview.     «

In machine and plant engineering, ensuring a short time-to-market to stay competitive in the global market requires planned reuse of control software. Modularity is a key enabler for the reuse of software parts in a different application, i.e., within a different project. Thereby, dependencies between modules play an essential role in software modularity and, thus, its reusability. Especially data exchange between modules via global variables (referred to as indirect data exchange) leads to hidd...     »