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Goal of FARACON tool

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Klaus Birken edited this page Mar 4, 2022 · 3 revisions

FARACON is a tool that uses model-to-model transformation to achieve a compatible code generation on both sides of ARA::COM (the communication layer of AUTOSAR Adaptive) and Franca IDL (an IDL used - among the others - by CommonAPI).

When combined with CommonAPI bindings and ARA::COM runtime, this achieves a runtime translation between ECUs. The alternative to this would is a manual translation that is not only tedious, but prone to human errors.

Using such a tool makes it possible to have a specification in a single format (we propose Franca IDL for this), and yet to use the full advantage of both technologies on both sides of the communication.

The possibility to enable interoperability between heterogeneous systems using model-to-model transformation methods can improve software quality and reduce development time and engineering costs.

The FARACON tool implements transformations from Adaptive AUTOSAR models to Franca IDL and vice versa. These transformations can be used as part of any current Eclipse IDE. For build automation and Continuous Integration (CI) it is also useful to deploy the transformations as a command-line tool.

The goal of the automatic transformations is to apply code generation by AUTOSAR-compatible code generators as well as Franca-compatible generators (e.g., CommonAPI C++) in a way that leads to transparent communication between both systems at runtime. Therefore, the tooling is based on a proper mapping between Adaptive AUTOSAR concepts and Franca IDL concepts. For example, each operation on an AUTOSAR service interface is mapped to a method in Franca IDL.

The following diagram shows how the transformation tooling interacts with the code generators. The generated code on the AUTOSAR and GENIVI subsystems is using the SOME/IP protocol for communication. As the subsystems are integrated on model level, the communication is automatically compatible.

A clear advantage of following this approach is that there is no need to define the same interface twice in Franca IDL and AUTOSAR ARXML. This reduces errors coming from manual maintaining the service interfaces by having only one source of origin.

In 2022, FARACON has been extended in order to support the following additional features:

  • optional generation of Application Data Types for the Franca-2-ARA transformation
  • optional transformation of SOME/IP deployment properties for the Franca-2-ARA transformation
  • a properties file which allows fine-grained control of the Franca-2-ARA transformation
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