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 UML (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 progressively grow into a design framework that will both enforce its rules and constraints and implement design patterns that result from our experience of HEP (High Energy Physics) TDAQ (Trigger and Data Acquisition) system development |
