Masterarbeit: Event-Driven Communication for Modern Test System Software

The MCF Technology GmbH develops and realizes customer-specific industrial test systems for the development & production of electronic and mechatronic components. The focus lies on the combination of hardware, automation technology, and high-performance software to reliably, reproducibly, and efficiently depict testing processes.

In addition to mechanical and electrical design of test stands, MCF also develops the complete test system software – from controlling the test hardware over flow control to data collection and evaluation. As a result, increasingly complex, interconnected software systems emerge, in which various programs, services, and processes must flexibly and event-driven communicate with each other.

In this context, MCF is currently dealing with modern communication and architecture concepts for industrial software – and that's where the topic of this master's thesis starts. In the industrial production environment, software components must reliably, performantly, and flexibly communicate with each other – often across process and system boundaries. Classic REST APIs are widely used, but they quickly reach their limits when dealing with event-driven processes, asynchrony, real-time events, and loosely coupled architectures.

VRPC (Variadic Remote Procedure Calls) is an open-source framework by Heisenware that pursues an alternative approach:

Instead of classical client-server communication, VRPC uses a message broker (MQTT) and makes existing code non-invasively available over the network using reflection. Methods can be called directly as functions, while events and asynchronous processes are native concepts.

This master's thesis should evaluate whether this concept is suitable for software solutions in the test system environment. Since VRPC is currently not available for all programming languages used at MCF, this master's thesis will investigate how the VRPC principle can be transferred to other programming languages or architectures.

Aufgaben

• Technical analysis of VRPC (architecture, communication model, strengths and limitations)
• Placement of VRPC in comparison to REST and gRPC for software in production environments
• Evaluation of the event-driven, broker-based approach (MQTT)
• Investigation of the transferability of the VRPC concept to other programming languages
• Design concept for further programming languages
• Implementation of selected core concepts (e.g. RPC calls, events, discovery)
• Demonstration in a test system application
• Evaluation of the solution regarding decoupling, development effort, performance, and maintainability
• Documentation and derivation of concrete recommendations for industrial use

Qualifikation

• Master's degree in the field ofInformatik, Software Engineering, Elektrotechnik, Mechatronik or comparable
• Very good knowledge in at least one programming language (e.g. Python, C#, Java, Dart)
• Interest inSoftwarearchitekturen, distributed systems, and communication protocols
• Basic understanding of asynchronous programming and event handling
• Analytical thinking and pleasure in critically questioning existing concepts
• Interest in practice-oriented research in the industrial environment

Benefits

• Atechnically challenging master's thesis with direct practical relevance
• Deep insights into modern industrial test systems
• Mentorship by experienced software and system engineers
• High freedom in technology and architecture decisions
• Short decision-making paths and open technical discussions
• Option for further cooperation after completing the work

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