A UML-based design process for distributed data-acquisition and triggering systems in high-energy physics experiments

We present the first results in the elaboration of a design and development process that tackles recurrent problems encountered when developing acquisition and triggering systems for high-energy physics experiments., These problems include software/hardware frontier definition and the impact of both intrinsic and performance-related parallelism on software development. Based on the Unified Modeling Language and its extension mechanisms, the process aims at capturing rules, constraints, and simple mechanisms that 1) separate functional concerns from deployment specifications, including hardware-software separation and 2) transparently and automatically derive distribution patterns from system-level definitions. The process is intended to grow progressively into a design framework that will both enforce its rules and constraints and implement design patterns that result from our experience of high-energy physics trigger and data-acquisition system development.