FROM
THE EDITOR
Does your latest embedded system diagram look like a big city freeway map with data
coming and going in all directions? Maybe it's time to consider that the data is actually the center of
your system. With that realization, it is a small logical step to realize that the query-based methods like
SQL that have served the database world so well for years can be adapted and applied to your embedded
system's device software architecture. In this week's new feature, we look at Encirq's data-centric
approach to device software design.
Thanks for reading! If there's anything we can do to make our publications more useful to you, please let us know at: comments@embeddedtechjournal.com
Kevin
Morris – Editor
Embedded Technology Journal
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Embedded Data Management Grows Up
Encirq Accelerates Data-based Development
Dealing with data in large enterprise systems has been a well-oiled process
for quite some time. Long elevated above the menial manipulations of general-purpose
programming languages, sophisticated schemas and query languages have made managing
massive amounts of data a routine, almost pedestrian exercise. Give a database expert a
few tools and a few hours, and he can sort through terabytes of trivia to tell you the
zip codes of all the people who share a common blood type and a penchant for poodles
while living in towns with populations less than twenty. The C compiler will never be
invoked.
In embedded system design, however, our data management has been a bit more
primitive. If SQL were a modern telecom network, most embedded applications would be
managing data with two tin cans and a piece of string. Our methods are typically not very
sophisticated because they haven't needed to be. We tinker and customize and create
miniature Rube Goldberg machines that monitor sensors, consolidate and synchronize data,
and make decisions based on the results. For our next system design, we forget it all
and start over again.
Of course, all that is changing. Now, with most mobile devices having some network
capability and convergence bringing us multi-purpose platforms with innumerable data
sources and sinks, keeping all that information straight is becoming a real challenge.
More often these days, embedded computing systems are actually data-centric, demanding an
approach to engineering that focuses on data elements and their relationships to each
other, with the realization that data could come into the system from a variety of
sources. [more]
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