LESSON 31

TECHNOLOGY OF AUTOMATA – BASED PROGRAMMING INTRODUCTION [1]

Task 1. Read and translate the text:

Задание 1. Прочитайте и переведите текст:

In recent years a great attention has been paid to the development of the technology of programming for the embedded systems and real-time systems. These systems have special requirements for the quality of software. One of the most well-known approaches for this field of tasks is synchronous programming. Simultaneously with the progress of synchronous programming in Europe, in Russia an approach called "automata-based programming" or "state-based programming" is being created. This method could be considered as a type of synchronous programming. It contains such phases of software developing as designing, implementing, debugging and documenting.

Today it has become one of the main terms in software development. After introduction of the term "input action" the term “automaton without outputs" could be brought in. After addition of the term "output action", the term "automaton" could be brought in. It is the finite determined automation. That is why, the sort of programming, which is based on this term was called "automata- based programming" in paper. So the process of software creation could be named "automata software design". The feature of this approach is automata. It is defined with the help of transition graphs. For distinguishing of the codes of these graphs the term "state coding" is to be introduced. When using "multiple state coding" with the help of single variable it is possible to distinguish amount of states which is equal to the amount of variables values.

This allows to introduce in programming the term "program observability". Programming is to be performed using the concept of "state", not the concept of "flag variables". It allows to understand and specify the task and its parts (subtasks) better. It is necessary to note that it automata-based programming debug is performed with the help of drawing up the protocols (logging) in the terms of automata.

In this approach there is a formal and isomorphic method of transfer from the transition graph to the software source code. So when using programming languages of the high level, the most suitable way is to use construction which is similar to construction "switch" of the programming language "C"'. That is why the technology of "automata-based programming" in paper was called as "Switch-technology". Nowadays this technology is been developed in several variants, for different types of task to be solved and for various types of computing devices.