Telelogic Rhapsody 7.0 Sets the New Standard for Embedded Developer Productivity

- Rhapsody 7.0, The First Model-Driven Development Environment to Support any Combination of Code or Model-Centric Development, Plus Enable Strategic Reuse of Software Assets with Support for the Software Product Line Approach -

MALMÖ, Sweden and IRVINE, California – 26 September, 2006 – Telelogic (Stockholm Exchange: TLOG), the leading provider of software solutions that align advanced systems and software development with business objectives, today announced the release of Telelogic Rhapsody® 7.0, the latest version of its Model-Driven Development (MDD) environment for embedded systems and software. Rhapsody 7.0, the industry’s fastest-growing MDD environment, focuses on developer productivity with improved support for multiple workflows (code-centric and model-centric), including Eclipse CDT integration; new features that allow users to implement a software product line approach for the strategic reuse of software assets; plus a long list of usability improvements which significantly ease MDD adoption and streamline the development workflow. "Once again Telelogic is leading the way with Rhapsody 7.0, which is packed with enhancements to make both C and object-oriented developers more productive," said Dr. Jerry Krasner Ph.D., Vice President, Embedded Market Forecasters. "In particular, its unique support for both code-centric and model-centric workflows should help traditional coders more easily adopt Model-Driven Development, and its support for strategic software asset reuse will enable organizations to more effectively leverage their intellectual property." Rhapsody 7.0 enables code-centric workflow, easing MDD adoption by allowing hand-coders to build models automatically from code and then to leverage these models for analysis and automatic documentation production. Developers who prefer a model-based approach can design at a higher level of abstraction, analyze and validate the design at the graphical level, and produce code and documentation automatically. A combination of these approaches is also possible, making Rhapsody the most flexible and productive MDD tool on the market. The Eclipse CDT integration, a powerful new feature found in Rhapsody 7.0, allows C and C++ code-centric developers to work in the Eclipse environment while model-centric developers work in Rhapsody. This integration provides automatic synchronization between the code and the model, with easy navigation between the two, allowing developers to adopt MDD at their own pace. With Rhapsody 7.0, developers can mix C, C++, and Java in the same model to optimize the development of multi-language applications. Additionally, Rhapsody 7.0 continues the Telelogic “Code Respect” initiative to better preserve the structure, formatting, and syntax of reverse-engineered code. Code Respect along with Rhapsody’s already powerful code visualization, round tripping and dynamic model / code associativity features offer four powerful options to developers who wish to integrate hand-written code into the model. Rhapsody 7.0 also provides an automated base-aware Difference and Merging (DiffMerge) feature, that enhances support for parallel development processes and reduces integration time. Flexibility and Process Automation Features To enhance the reuse of software assets, including support for organizations implementing the Software Product Line (SPL) approach, Rhapsody 7.0 provides numerous flexibility and process automation features that improve the implementation of SPL. Not limited to organizations implementing SPL, these features are also useful to anyone with an advanced, parallel, or complex development process. The Software Engineering Institute (Carnegie Mellon University, 2006) defines a software product line as “a set of software-intensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way.” With its focus on reuse, SPL enables domain engineers to create a set of core assets for the product line which can later be used by application engineers to implement the final products. Rhapsody 7.0 supports these goals with flexible enhancements designed to ease the transition to an MDD-based SPL approach. "Rhapsody allows domain engineers to capture their core reusable assets using either domain-specific models or UML™," said Ingemar Ljungdahl, Chief Technology Officer, Telelogic. "Variability within these core assets is defined using Rhapsody 7.0’s enhanced stereotyping and profiling capabilities. The application engineer can then automate and customize much of the process of developing a specific product from the core assets utilizing Rhaposdy’s new Java API, enhanced rules-based code generation, and extensions to its command line interface." The ability to open multiple projects in one Rhapsody session and store components under packages within a project provides process flexibility. Enhancements to Rhapsody’s configuration and requirement management interfaces refines user control over core assets and final products. These new capabilities, coupled with the already flexible and customizable MDD capabilities found in Rhapsody 7.0, assist users who seek a powerful MDD-based SPL approach. Improved Usability, Developer Productivity With Rhapsody 7.0, Telelogic set out to establish a new standard for usability among MDD tools. To create a better out-of-the-box experience, a new welcome window now appears when Rhapsody is opened. This widow provides navigation to user resources such as sample models, documentation, tutorials and release contents. The content of this window is user configurable, removing the “blank window syndrome” and enabling users to start working with Rhapsody more quickly. Many of the tab windows can now be broken out into separate windows and docked in the general workspace, and set to either freeze on the currently selected element or to update when new elements are selected. These new capabilities enable the user to more easily navigate the model and provide a more seamless workflow. New search and embedded help capabilities have been added to Rhapsody Properties, used to control and customize modeling elements, that allow users to easily navigate to the relevant property, and / or to the embedded help which describes the property and how to set it. A combination of these approaches is also possible, making Rhapsody amongst the most flexible and productive MDD tools on the market. Rhapsody 7.0 further improves developer productivity with C and Java-specific developer refinements. The look and feel of the MDD environment has been optimized for the C developer, enabling design at the graphical level using concepts and terms that map to the C programming language. The user’s experience is enhanced, and this enables embedded C developers to obtain the benefits provided by MDD while reducing the learning curve. In addition, new C rules-based code generation provides users with complete control over the code they generate, reducing project risk and increasing long-term code reuse. For the Java developer, Rhapsody Java code generation has been upgraded to support JDK 5 (1.5) generics and type safe containers allowing Rhapsody users to produce code from a wider range of modeling constructs. Rhapsody 7.0 sets the professional standard for embedded systems and software development by focusing on developer productivity, easing the learning curve for MDD, driving SPL implementation and asset reuse, and supporting code-centric and model-centric workflows including a seamless integration with Eclipse CDT. Rhapsody 7.0 will be shipping beginning September 25, 2006. About Rhapsody Rhapsody is the industry's leading UML 2.0 and OMG SysML™ based Model-Driven Development environment for systems and software engineering. As the only product on the market with the advanced capability to extend UML 2.0, Rhapsody allows both function-oriented and object-oriented design techniques to co-exist in one environment. Rhapsody has won numerous awards including the Best in Show award at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco from VDC; the SD Times 100 for the third year in a row by taking top honors in the Modeling category; and the Model-Driven Development Focus of the Embedded Development Arena award. Rhapsody has been recently endorsed by Embedded Market Forecasters as the tool of choice for C developers.