StateWORKS Newsletter 3/04

Topics:

  1. Welcome
  2. State machine misunderstandings

1. Welcome

We will have many other interesting news in the autumn. Today, I would like only to direct your attention to a paper that we have published in the IEE Computing & Control Engineering journal: August/September 2004. I hope you will enjoy reading it. (If you are not an IEE Member, then a version of the paper is also available from our web site.)

I wish you still a nice summer and healthy vacations.

Regards
F. Wagner

2. State machine misunderstandings

A state machine concept is not a software specific idea. The state machine is a general model to describe a system behavior. Initially, it was introduced in hardware design. Later, it was taken over to software development. Over the years we have observed an increasing confusion around the concept and the use of state machines in a software environment. Even the basic definitions are not quite clear.

The paper summarizes common misunderstandings built up around the concept of state machines and positions StateWORKS in this perspective.

In the week after publication we received some comments from readers. The comments support our opinion about the confusion existing in this area. We learnt also some interesting lessons: for some persons a state machine is just a model to describe a piece of code. They do not realize that finite state machines could be used to build something that covers the entire behaviour of a system.