Whitepapers
White Papers from Foliage are your source for information on the latest technology developments that affect your industry. This page lists all the white papers Foliage has published over the past several years. You may also browse by industry, or go directly to our technology-focused papers.
Author: Amit Shah, Test Engineering Manager, Foliage Tim Bosch, Chief Architect, Foliage
Manual testing is time-consuming and error prone, with functional and system testing that starts late in the software development lifecycle. A reliance on manual testing significantly increases the risk of late defect discovery and can often lead to product release delays. The lack of test automation can impact manufacturing and support, causing delays and extra effort in these areas as well.
While there are proven automated test tools and techniques for unit and integration testing, most medical device companies have yet to embrace an overall automated testing strategy that fully develops automation capabilities for the full range of testing required for embedded real-time medical devices. This article examines the challenges associated with testing embedded real-time medical systems and presents strategies that address these challenges through automation that will improve quality and reduce verification cycle time and costs.
Author: Dan O’Connor, Technical Director Vince Dovydaitis, Technical Director
Security vendors are feeling the pressure to deliver integrated enterprise security solutions to their customer base. Driving this trend are the end customers, who are looking for improved, integrated threat response coupled with lower total cost of ownership. Suppliers that offer only stove-piped point solutions will lose market share and will eventually be left behind. This paper prescribes a proven approach with well-defined steps for developing a security integration strategy that is aligned with your specific business drivers and delivers early business value.
Author: Amit Shah, Test Engineering Manager and Tim Bosch, Chief Architect
Implementing an automated software testing program requires a structured and planned approach. It requires an automated test strategy specifically tailored to your software development process and regulatory requirements. It also requires that you select the right automated test tools and that you design modularity into your test architecture using automated test frameworks. By following the approach presented in this paper, you can realize a significant return on investment for automated software testing, gain a competitive advantage in the industry by reducing time to market, and increase the quality level for your products.
Author: Tim Bosch - Chief Architect, Medical Division
Commercial software development best practices have embraced agile software development methods for some time now and have clearly demonstrated how they improve pace and efficiency and provide greater flexibility. This paper shows how it is possible to adapt these approaches to medical device software development, and still manage the quality and design controls demanded by various regulatory bodies like the FDA.
Author: Tim Bosch, Chief Architect
This article describes how healthcare information system providers can increase the efficiency and pace of software development by adopting or adapting agile development methods while preserving quality and meeting design control demands.
Author: Charlie Alfred, Principal Architect
The June 2007 issue of 'Product Design & Development' featured an article entitled "A Development Cure: Value Models Can Help Align Medical Product Development Strategy" authored by Charlie Alfred, Principal Architect at Foliage. The article examines how value models can be used to capture the critical business, marketing, competitive, financial and technology information to successfully drive product design and development.
Author: Charlie Alfred, Principal Architect; Tim Bowe, Co-CEO; Dan O’Connor, Chief Architect
Product management for semiconductor equipment can be challenging. Customers, competitors, suppliers, and distributors take actions that can leave you off balance, and challenge you to respond in a decisive and creative way. And when you are not fighting fires with the outside world, your own organization seems to be working at cross-purposes. This paper is about identifying the keys to defining a product strategy destined to succeed.
Value Driven Analysis (VDA) is a Foliage–developed process for ensuring alignment between overarching business and product strategies and the engineering team’s tradeoff decisions. It facilitates synergy between each of the stakeholder groups resulting in a concise, easy to understand product strategy. This in turn helps ensure that product development investments yield optimal return.
Author: Timothy Bowe, Co-CEO
Security equipment manufactures are increasingly being pressured to supply technically complex, integrated systems in response to the industry’s rapid consolidation. Organizations seeking to fulfill an integrated position in the market are more and more utilizing merger and acquisition strategies to achieve increased capabilities and product line expansion. But how do organizations quickly and successfully integrate multiple entities resulting from technology-based acquisitions? This paper investigates the acquisition integration puzzle from the perspective of R&D. “R&D Efficiency in a Chaotic Security Industry” examines the factors and processes that support aligning of business and technology strategies to extract the most market leverage and top-line growth from combined or restructured product lines.
Author: Ron Rubbico, Co-CEO Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager Naresh Parmar, Technical Director
As telecommunications companies and service providers struggle to successfully deliver and deploy communications products and services demanded by a rapidly consolidating industry, companies are turning to mergers, acquisitions and reorganizations to realign product strategies as a means to developing more integrated solutions. This paper introduces proven strategies and techniques that drive critical product and business strategies to extract the most market leverage and revenue growth resulting from combined or restructured product lines.
Author: Charlie Alfred, Principal Architect; Tim Bowe, Co-CEO
Successfully delivering next generation cardiology products to market is not an easy task. You have to balance requests for new product features against available budget, staffing limitations, schedule constraints, strategic importance and expected profit. The most effective way to address this challenge is by having a well defined (and agreed upon) product strategy. This white paper identifies the keys to defining a product strategy destined to succeed. It outlines some tough questions that your organization must ask prior to establishing an effective product strategy, and it also proposes actions that must be taken if your organization is unable to answer any of these questions.
Author: Tim Bowe, CEO
As the trend towards private equity investment continues to rise, driving up enterprise valuations, increased emphasis is being placed on financial and operational analyses, and market validation, as qualifying components to making final investment decisions. In the technology marketplace, going beyond conventional due diligence to evaluate a company’s product portfolio for alignment of technology and product, to business and product strategies, can make the difference between investment success and failure. This paper directly addresses the issue of evaluation of technical products and their development organization. Using several case studies, the limitations of classical due diligence are drawn, along with the benefits that accrue from a formal product or product portfolio assessment.
Author: Alan Aghan, Principal Engineer
In the foreseeable future there will be an increasing shortage of technically skilled and experienced workers in the Aerospace industry, and the situation is reaching crisis level. This paper discusses this assertion, its causes, its implications and some possible ways to address the problem.
Author: Jim Roman, Senior Business Development Manager, Security; Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace, Defense and Security
As terrorists, rogue nations and criminals become more sophisticated, customers in the security market demand rapid response from security manufacturers in building next-generation equipment. Driven by constantly shifting specifications, affordability considerations, and shortened development schedules, trade-off decisions may unknowingly jeopardize market acceptance and in turn, hinder a company’s ability to achieve sustainable market share. This brief explores the impact of following a market-driven philosophy and describes a method of identifying and propagating key value drivers throughout the development cycle to ensure that critical end user requirements are met.
Author: Hoyt Lougee; Brian Bowe; Vince Dovydaitis; Garrett Thurston
The FAA is considering adopting the commercial-avionics guidance RTCA DO-178B for the certifiability of UAS embedded software. This paper identifies a practical approach to identifying system criticality, which is integral to the process of certifying UAS software. In addition, this paper will consider inherent risks and failures of UAS within a variety of operating environments and will conclude with a concrete proposal for a UAS criticality stratification approach.
Author: Jeff Fried, Communications
Computing and communications are steadily converging, driving strong demand for products that support new network protocols and architectures. This paper presents architectural analysis as a strategic option available to communications equipment providers to meet the challenges demanded by convergence. We also explore best approaches and methodologies for analyzing product extension, migration, acquisition and new product development in the context of convergence.
Author: Tim Bowe, Co-CEO; Norm Delisle, Engineering Vice President; Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager
Leading companies in the medical industry have a long history of using mergers and acquisitions as an alternative method of advancing their product offerings. The acquisition strategy has been used as an alternative to already large R&D budgets, and as a bulwark against the increasingly long product development cycles under which many companies function. This paper examines the factors that are critical in aligning business and technology strategies to extract the most market leverage and top-line growth from combined or restructured product lines.
Author: Ron Rubbico, Co-CEO; Tim Bowe, Co-CEO; Norm Delisle, Engineering Vice President; Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager
As the semiconductor equipment industry continues to recover and drive a new cycle of innovation, the winners of the battle for market share—the survivors of the continuing consolidation—inevitably will be those who can best leverage their combined technology assets to provide differentiable value to both their customers and shareholders. This paper examines the factors that are critical in aligning business and technology strategies to extract the most market leverage and top-line growth from combined or restructured product lines.
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace, Defense, and Security Division; Jim Roman, Senior Business Development Manager, Security
Have you ever authorized a software project only to wind up with something unexpected upon the program’s completion? Does your software development team ever lose sight of the business goals? Once you turn your engineers loose on a software project do you feel that you're no longer in the loop? In the security marketplace, software development increasingly accounts for product development cost overruns, schedule woes, and corporate credibility problems—ultimately affecting survival. What can you do about it? Our latest brief entitled “It’s Your Fault Too” illustrates the critical importance of executive involvement. Four pages from now, you will understand how you can maintain control of your product development efforts.
Author: Ron Rubbico, Co-CEO; Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace Division
This paper examines the factors that are critical to align business and technology strategies to extract the most market leverage and top-line growth from combined or restructured product lines. The paper draws from approaches achieving success in other heavily consolidating industries and applies them to the unique challenges facing Aerospace manufacturers.
Author: Karl Aeder, Principal Software Engineer
Many of today’s embedded device control systems require some amount of deterministic software device control. Real-time deterministic control software poses unique technical challenges. By employing proven software architectural approaches, real-time software development project risks can be reduced significantly. In addition, through these approaches organizations can realize significant reductions in time to market and engineering costs across the initial development, enhancement, and maintenance of the software over its lifetime.
Author: Tim Bosch, Chief Architect, Medical Division
This white paper defines “integration” and “interoperability”, and presents best approaches to each based on real world experience. These practical steps will help you meet expectations and successfully achieve the integration and interoperability that you desire.
Author: Norm Delisle, Vice President of Engineering; David Jacques,Engineering Director; Timothy Bowe, co-CEO
This paper describes techniques for linking and aligning business and product objectives with software architecture formulation and software development activities. In short, ensuring that what gets developed meets market needs and delivers on business objectives.
Author: Timothy Bosch, Technical Director; Timothy Bowe, Co-CEO
This new white paper from Foliage discusses the important assessment steps that any medical company should take before investing in a next generation software product development effort. This paper describes a very low investment, high return method to evaluate your existing software-based product where the end result is guaranteed alignment of your business, product and technology goals.
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager; Garrett Thurston, Sales Manager, Aerospace Division
This white paper shows how the FAA-adopted software guidance for manned-applications—RTCA/DO-178B, Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification; and RTCA/DO-278, Guidelines for Communication, Navigation, Surveillance, and Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) Systems Software Integrity Assurance—can be applied to UAV certification.
Author: Norm Delisle, Engineering Vice President
This paper explores how to recognize and recover from fragile legacy equipment software systems. We describe methods for determining whether you are sitting on a legacy software time bomb before your business is impacted.
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace Division; Norm Delisle, Engineering Vice President
This paper presents proven approaches for establishing and aligning effective Business, Product, and Technology strategies that enable an organization to ensure that downstream tradeoffs are made in the context of business goals and objectives.
Author: George Iglesias, Principal Software Engineer; Tim Bosch, Technical Director; Timothy Bowe, Co-CEO
All too often, the ‘sellability’ features of a product get stripped away during the product development stages of requirements and architecture development. Trade-offs are made that may improve configurability and functionability, or shorten schedules, but unwittingly at the cost of usability. This Foliage white paper describes the methods and importance to preserving the intent of meeting your end user needs.
Author: Norm Delisle, Engineering V.P.; David Jacques, Engineer; Tim Bowe, Co-CEO
This paper presents proven approaches for improving product strategy definition and technical strategy alignment for capital equipment product software.
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace Division
This paper offers an analysis of requirements and their tremendous impact on the cost, duration, and predictability of the critical software development task. It also presents common pitfalls and best practices for writing successful requirements that lead to lower costs, shortened schedules, enhanced predictability, and—ultimately—marketplace success.
Author: Jeff Mehlman, Managing Director, Financial Practice
This paper describes an approach for gaining the greatest economic and competitive benefit from a reference data management improvement program. Potential roles for external offerings, industry initiatives, vendor products, and vendor outsourcing services are discussed.
Author: Timothy Bosch, Technical Director, Medical Division, Tim Bowe, Co-CEO, George Plourde, Engineering Director, Medical Division
You can gain control of your software budget, schedule, and quality from definition through verification in a way that will help ensure customer acceptance and a prosperous product life by embracing four critical strategies: Align Business and Technology Goals; Manage Requirements; Formulate an Effective Architecture; and Drive Successful Development.
Author: Norm Delisle, Division Manager, Semiconductor
This white paper describes how Software Reliability Engineering methods can be used to achieve much higher levels of software reliability without significant increases to schedule or budget.
Author: Charlie Alfred, Technical Director
This paper introduces two essential concepts: value models and architecture strategy, which are missing fom many development processes. The creation of well-defined value models provides direction that improves the quality of tradeoff decisions, especially in systems that are deployed to many users in various settings. The existence of a clearly stated architecture strategy provides a coherent high-level direction for the system. This paper shows how these two concepts can be integrated effectively.
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace Division
A solid reuse strategy is critical in maintaining your competitive advantage with products containing certifiable software. Foliage presents a new approach to Reuse Planning based on 13 years of experience developing certified software and technology strategy consulting.
Author: Wayne Lobb, Engineering Director
This white paper discusses a number of simple, straightforward, and proven management techniques that will reduce software-related failures.
Author: Timothy Bosch, Technical Director, Medical Division, John Cadigan, General Manager, Medical Division
This paper discusses the importance of evaluating system architectures at the earliest stage of system definition, using quantifiable assessments of system suitability and value to guide and inform business decisions. We present a case study to highlight and explore how these assessment techniques are applied to a real world medical product.
Author: Christopher Prinos, Senior Software Quality Engineer
Discusses the role of software test automation to increase testing effectiveness and successful deployment. Compares existing technologies and tools for test automation and presents a test framework based on open-source tools.
Author: Norm Delisle, Engineering V.P.; Wayne Lobb, Engineering Director; Tim Bowe, Co-CEO
How to keep control of semi software engineering expenses without missing sales opportunities. Looks at the pros and cons of three options: hiring permanent staff, using temporary contractors, and both domestic and offshore outsourcing.
Author: Kevin Weber, Principal Software Engineer; Alan Blannin, Principal Software Engineer; Wayne Lobb, Engineering Director
Key technical challenges for incremental migration in .NET, including enabling reliable interoperation of legacy C/C++ code with new C# code. Presents an overall plan for doing major migrations.
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace Division
We present a Foliage case study to illustrate the flexibility of RTCA/DO-178B and the insight necessary for a smooth certification process. We also present several pressure points that further illustrate the complexity of certification dynamics and offer insight on how they are viewed by the FAA.
Author: Tim Bowe, Co-CEO, Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Director, Jim Everett-Wilson, Technical Director, John Cadigan, Medical Practice Director
We show that long software development cycles are frequently a symptom of a larger issue - a dynamic that includes the corporate product strategy, the product focus, and requirements development. By approaching the product requirements process in a more structured fashion, it is possible to shorten the development process.
Author: Jim Everett-Wilson, Technical Director
This paper discusses some of the challenges encountered in planning the evolution of reference data systems, and the techniques that can be used to jump-start that planning process effectively.
Author: Eric Livingston, Engineering Director
This was part of a joint presentation with James Hartley of the Financial Information Software Division to provide insight into current status of MDDL standards and implementation. It addresses the business rationale for MDDL and the role of MDDL in improving both internal market data systems and transactions with external entities.
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace Division
This paper explores the flexibility provided and constraints imposed by DO-178B. We then apply this understanding to the most effective means to analyze a transition effort: the gap analysis.
Author: Eric Livingston, Engineering Director
This brief presentation provides an overview of the capabilities provided by the MDDL toolkit created by Foliage on behalf of the Financial Information Software Division and an introduction to Foliage's MDDL demonstration.
Author: Vince Dovydaitis, Technical Director
Utilizing the case study method, this presentation analyzes the architecture and implementation of a secure image storage and distribution system. The paper examines the effect of using .NET on both developer productivity and the architecture of the resulting system. This presentation also provides insight into the implications of key business drivers on system architecture.
Author: Kevin Platt, Principal Software Engineer
This presentation compares the major technology choices available (user-, role-, and context-based systems) and identifies the objectives they satisfy and the objectives they don't. The architecture for a context-based authentication and authorization system is then presented and evaluated in more depth to identify the areas of risk, which components are necessary for the architecture to satisfy the objectives identified earlier, and the tradeoffs between the available choices.
Author: Norm Delisle, Engineering V.P.; Charlie Alfred, Technical Director
Product Line Architecture allows an entire family of products to use the same software framework. This paper provides business and technical approaches to achieve the substantial benefits from well designed reusable architectures.
Author: Charlie Alfred, Technical Director
This presentation moves beyond the basics to consider how architecture formulation changes as organizations move from one-product-one-context, to one-product-multiple-context to multiple-product product line architectures.
Author: Tim Bowe, Co-CEO; Charlie Alfred, Technical Director; John Cadigan, Medical Practice Director
This paper discusses the development of product line architectures from the perspective of executives and managers. We look at what does and does not constitute a product line and we show how ineffectively executing a product line architecture strategy can have serious and long-term ramifications for the organization.
Author: Charlie Alfred, Technical Director
This paper introduces two essential concepts; value models and architecture strategy; concepts that are missing from many development processes. The creation of well-defined value models provides direction that improves the quality of tradeoff decisions, especially in systems that are deployed to many users in various settings. The existence of a clearly-stated architecture strategy provides a coherent high-level direction for the system, in the same way that the United States Constitution does for its nation. Finally, this paper will show how these two concepts can be integrated effectively with waterfall, spiral, or agile methods.
Author: Eric Livingston, Engineering Director
This paper examines the industry’s current reference data improvement strategies and describes some alternative approaches. Two problem-sets are addressed: inter-enterprise problems affecting the world wide trading community, and intra-enterprise problems which contribute to internal delays and costs.
Author: Mark Hersey, Engineering Director; John Cadigan, Medical Practice Director; Tim Bowe, Co-CEO
As medical devices and information systems enter their end-of-life period, product teams need to select the software technologies for their next-generation products. This paper outlines the considerations and risks involved in selecting technologies and concludes with examples of project characteristics that will help you decide whether or not your project is suited to .NET.
Author: Charlie Alfred, Technical Director; Tim Bowe, Co-CEO
This paper addresses the technical issues associated with formulating an architecture strategy for a family of software-intensive products. It also describes some of the important obstacles that are faced when formulating an architecture, and discusses some techniques to help overcome these obstacles.
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace Division; Ron Rubbico, Co-CEO
This paper introduces the concepts surrounding product line development and the associated product line architectures (PLAs), and describes the practices that have evolved to develop and maintain them.
Author: Wayne A. Lobb, Ph.D., Engineering Director
As with all new technologies, the waters of SOAP and .NET are best tested one leg at a time. This paper, which is based on experience with multiple real-world .NET projects, summarizes plusses and minuses of SOAP and .NET and makes specific recommendations about how to adopt them for use in semiconductor equipment control systems.
Author: Rob Firmin, Ph.D., Vice President
Predictive failure analysis (PFA) can save substantial time and money for fab operations because it can provide sufficient warning to prevent a shutdown or prepare for a shutdown, and because it can reduce the time spent in cause identification. This paper presents the details of a comprehensive PFA system, demonstrates quantitative results and quantifies examples of potential savings.
Author: Norm Delisle, Engineering V.P.; Dan O’Connor, Principal Software Engineer
This paper describes an approach for designing effective emulators. Case studies based on Foliage’s experience developing dozens of semi equipment control systems over the past decade are used to illustrate the key design principles.
Author: Bill Balicki, Senior Manager; Norm Delisle, Vice President
This paper identifies methods for determining a software strategy that minimizes risk while, most importantly, maximizes return on investment. The suggestions could make a difference between the success and failure for your products and your company as we emerge from this downturn.
Author: David Dickie, Engineering Director; Jim Everett-Wilson, Technical Director; Robert Mansmann, Senior Manager, Financial Practice
This paper defines the key challenges and the fundamental skills, processes, and expertise needed to implement highly complex pre-trade compliance capabilities.
Author: John Cadigan, Medical Practice Director; Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Director
This paper discusses the importance of medical software time-to-market, key attributes of high-performance teams, and an improved strategy to engage such teams without incurring the risk, cost, and delay required to build one.
Author: Eric Livingston, Engineering Director
This presentation, given at the Financial Information Software Division's 2003 XML for Market Data Conference in NYC, presents a high-level case study of a Market Data Reference system for a large international financial services firm.
Author: Vince Dovydaitis, Engineering Director; Denis Piliptchouk, Principal Engineer
This presentation looks at the ways to forge an integration between Identity Management solutions from Liberty Alliance and WS-Security groups, hidden obstacles along the way, and the resulting design and implementation trade-offs and limitations.
Author: Erik Westlund, Principal Software Architect
This presentation looks at the set of protocols supported by WS-Security (Kerberos, SAML, etc.), and reviews their bindings, drawbacks, and restrictions. It also discusses the higher-level abstraction layer that aids in forming multiple implementations into a Federated Identity Management capability.
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace Division; Rob Firmin, Vice President
This paper presents insight into what constitutes the best software team, the effects and pitfalls associated with software process improvement efforts, and the pros and cons of all the staffing options available.
Author: Jim Everett-Wilson, Technical Director
Reference data systems are at the center of your enterprise and upgrading them can be a daunting task. This article by Foliage appeared in Risk Waters' Inside Market Data online newsletter.
Author: Charlie Alfred, Technical Director
This paper introduces a concept called architecture challenges and describes why it plays a crucial important role in the process of formulating a software architecture for a system...
Author: Jim Everett-Wilson, Technical Director; Robert Mansmann, Senior Manager, Financial Practice; Ron Rubbico, Co-CEO; Charlie Alfred, Technical Director
Automating reference data is getting top priority across the industry. Yet, designing, architecting and implementing a system can cost tens of millions of dollars and, like many large complex projects, can fall short of its intended objective or fail altogether. The strategies and approaches discussed in this paper are presented so firms can minimize their risks, insure their success, and maximize their ROI...
Author: Rob Firmin, Vice President
To maximize the ROI of software-dependent products, semi managers must understand basic principles of why software development succeeds or fails. In this paper we explain the characteristics and dynamics that distinguish best practices from typical practices in terms of time, money, and most of all, risk....
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace Division
This paper details a seven-step formal reuse analysis and implementation approach. Rigorously following these steps will allow you to lower development risk, increase ROI, and help ensure successful, profitable software development. This paper is a companion paper to Reuse and DO-178B Certified Software, which defines reuse, discusses reuse drivers and typical reuse strategies, details the various types of reuse from a certifiability perspective, and introduces the seven-step formal reuse analysis and implementation approach...
Author: Norm Delisle, Engineering VP; Wayne Lobb, Engineering Director; Jay McGaffigan, Principal Software Engineer; Tim Bowe, Co-CEO
This paper looks at the use of metrics and industry benchmarks for software development and translates them into practical guidelines to help you structure your software projects for minimum cost - and minimum risk...
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace Division
This paper explores the ramifications of key elements of the FAA’s Advisory Circular (AC) 29 MG 15 (Airworthiness Approval of Rotorcraft Health Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMSs). This includes: end-to-end criticality assessments, special consideration for COTS ground equipment and software, credit validation for monitoring techniques, algorithms, parameters and rejection criteria, intervention actions associated with HUMS monitoring data, and certification mitigation actions to lower the criticality levels (and costs) of all or part of the HUMS system...
Author: Kevin Platt, Principal Software Engineer
This paper presents techniques that may be leveraged to produce fast, high-quality graphics on low-resolution displays. The memory implications and tradeoffs associated with these techniques are also discussed. The paper then describes antialiasing algorithms for various graphics elements, a weighted area sampling approach for pre-computing antialiased lookup tables near the edges and endpoints of lines, and a supersampling approach is discussed for quickly rendering rotated bitmaps...
Author: John Cadigan, Medical Division Manager Jim Everett-Wilson, Technical Director, Norm Delisle, Engineering V.P.
If you are facing a complete product redevelopment, you may not have to rewrite the entire program. This paper discusses some low-cost, easy-to-learn formal software architecture evaluation methods that can be used to help you save millions of dollars per year in software maintenance costs. Additionally, these methods can help you gain the ability to quickly develop new products off your software code base to capitalize on new product opportunities.
Author: Norm Delisle, Engineering V.P.; Dan O'Connor, Principal Software Engineer; Rick Flanders, Principal Software Engineer; Tim Bowe, Co-CEO
This paper describes an approach for incrementally migrating existing legacy equipment software to a new software architecture. This approach reduces overall risk, reduces initial investment, and provides an extremely attractive return on investment. Based on our lessons learned - both designing semi equipment control systems from scratch and migrating existing systems to improved software architectures - we describe how to determine whether your existing software can be migrated and how to determine the best migration approach...
Author: Hoyt Lougee, Engineering Manager, Aerospace Division
This paper, from a certifiability perspective, defines reuse, discusses reuse drivers and typical reuse scenarios, and details the various types of reuse. In addition, a brief overview of a reuse analysis and implementation approach will be presented...
Author: Charlie Alfred, Technical Director; Tom Jordan, Vice President, Technology Strategy
As software generations evolve, so do their architectures. A new generational approach called "service oriented architecture" (SOA) offers important practical benefits to mission critical systems such as knowledge portals, financial transaction portals, trading systems, settlement systems, and highly distributed enterprise applications...
Author: Brian Handspicker, Engineering Director
This paper discusses the architectural issues associated with developing, deploying, and supporting secure e-medical systems in order to comply with Federal HIPAA regulations. Content includes security scenarios, technologies, and tradeoffs between the potential solutions...
Author: Rob Firmin, Ph.D., Managing Director
This paper presents an interpretation of the meaning of time series analysis in that light; why it is so different from non-time series analysis; which forms of time series analysis are most relevant to the semi industry; why, when joined with Advanced Process Control (APC), anomaly-detecting and causal time series modeling is going to play a critical role in fab operations in the future; what that role could be; and how it may come about...
Author: Vince Dovydaitis, Engineering Director
In this paper we discuss a hybrid approach that employs OO technology for requirements analysis and software design, but uses a traditional structured language, C, for implementation. By integrating the two into a single process, we are able to derive the benefits of OO technology while avoiding the less deterministic behavior of current OO implementation technology...
Author: Vince Dovydaitis, Engineering Director; Denis Piliptchouk, Principal Engineer
Foliage conducted a security-focused examination of the new offerings from Sun and Microsoft: Sun's Java JDK 1.4 and Microsoft's .NET 1.0. The examination compared and contrasted the mechanisms present in both frameworks that are needed to architect and implement secure systems...
Author: Brian Handspicker, Engineering Director
A vision for delivering healthcare departmental information systems, using the latest point-of-care integration standards, clinical information standards, and web services technologies...
Author: Tim Bowe, Co-CEO; Charles Alfred, Engineering Director; Vince Dovydaitis, Engineering Director; Norm Delisle, Engineering V.P.
This white paper proposes a control system architecture that will deliver complex capabilities and meet the goals of systems with decreased field service costs, reduced software maintenance costs and increased system extensibility...
