GEODAS: an industrial experience with component frameworks for data acquisition and analysis systems

Data acquisition and analysis systems (DAAS) are hardware/software systems with a strong dependence on the features of the process under control, where the amount of data and the sampling frequency of signals to be processed are the main critical aspects of the system. Nowadays DAAS applications are designed according to the specific needs of each particular field. These solutions produce ad hoc software developments, very difficult to reuse. Nevertheless, the basic structure of DAAS is the same across all the different application fields. GEODAS is an EU-funded project whose goal is to develop a framework of reusable, generic components focused on the high-performance DAAS domain. These components capture the generic behaviour of data acquisition systems and offer a new approach for the creation of these systems, which is more modular, reusable, independent from the electronics interface and more platform independent. This paper describes the application of component-based software engineering concepts in an industrial, high-performance, real-time application domain.