A UML-based design process for distributed data-acquisition and triggeringsystems 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 acquis ition and triggering systems for high-energy physics experiments. These pro blems include soft ware/hardware frontier definition and the impact of both intrinsic and performance-related parallelism on software development. Bas ed on the Unified Modeling Language and its extension mechanisms, the proce ss aims at capturing rules, constraints, and simple mechanisms that 1) sepa rate functional concerns from deployment specifications, including hardware -software separation and 2) transparently and automatically derive distribu tion patterns from system-level definitions. The process is intended to gro w progressively into a design framework that will both enforce its rules an d constraints and implement design patterns that result from our experience of high-energy physics trigger and data-acquisition system development.