Model Global Data by Creating Data Stores

A data store is a repository to which you can write data, and from which you can read data, without having to connect an input or output signal directly to the data store. Data stores are accessible across model levels, so subsystems and referenced models can use data stores to share data without using I/O ports. To decide whether to use data stores, see Data Store Basics.

Data Store Examples

Overview

The following examples illustrate techniques for defining and accessing data stores. See Order Data Store Access for techniques that control data store access over time, such as ensuring that a given data store is always written before it is read. See Data Store Diagnostics for techniques you can use to help detect and correct potential data store errors without needing to run any simulations.

Note

In addition to the following examples, see the sldemo_mdlref_dsm model, which shows how to use global data stores to share data among referenced models.

Local Data Store Example

The following model illustrates creation and access of a local data store, which is visible only in a model or particular subsystem.

This model uses a data store to permit subsystem A to signal that its output is invalid. If subsystem A's output is invalid, the model uses the output of subsystem B.

Global Data Store Example

The following model replaces the subsystems of the previous example with functionally identical referenced models to illustrate use of a global data store to share data in a model reference hierarchy.

In this example, the top model uses a signal object in the MATLAB® workspace to define the error data store. This is necessary because data stores are visible across model boundaries only if they are defined by signal objects in the MATLAB workspace.

Create and Apply Data Stores

Note

To use buses and arrays of buses with data stores, perform both the following procedure and Setting Up a Model to Use Data Stores with Buses and Arrays of Buses.

The following is a general workflow for configuring data stores. You can perform the tasks in a different order, or separately from the rest, depending on how you use data stores.

  1. Where applicable, plan your use of data stores to minimize their effect on software verification. For more information, see Data Stores and Software Verification.

  2. Create data stores using the techniques described in Data Stores with Data Store Memory Blocks or Data Stores with Signal Objects. For greater reliability, consider assigning rather than inheriting data store attributes, as described in Specifying Data Store Memory Block Attributes.

  3. Add to the model Data Store Write and Data Store Read blocks to write to and read from the data stores, as described in Access Data Stores with Simulink Blocks.

  4. Configure the model and the blocks that access each data store to avoid concurrency failures when reading and writing the data store, as described in Order Data Store Access.

  5. Apply the techniques described in Data Store Diagnostics as needed to prevent data store errors, or to diagnose them if they occur during simulation.

  6. If you intend to generate code for your model, see Data Stores in Generated Code (Simulink Coder).

To create a data store, you create a Data Store Memory block or a Simulink.Signal object. The block or signal object represents the data store and specifies its properties. Every data store must have a unique name.

Data stores implemented with Data Store Memory blocks:

  • Support data store initialization

  • Provide control of data store scope and options at specific levels in the model hierarchy

  • Require a block to represent the data store

  • Cannot be accessed within referenced models

  • Cannot be in a subsystem that a For Each Subsystem block represents.

Data stores implemented with Simulink.Signal objects:

  • Provide model-wide control of data store scope and options

  • Do not require a block to represent the data store

  • Can be accessed in referenced models, if the data store is global

Be careful not to equate local data stores with Data Store Memory blocks, and global data stores with Simulink.Signal objects. Either technique can define a local data store, and a signal object can define either a local or a global data store.

Data Stores with Data Store Memory Blocks

Creating the Data Store

To use a Data Store Memory block to define a data store, drag an instance of the block into the model at the topmost level from which you want the data store to be visible. The result is a local data store, which is not accessible within referenced models.

  • To define a data store that is visible at every level within a given model, except within Model blocks, drag the Data Store Memory block into the root level of the model.

  • To define a data store that is visible only within a particular subsystem and the subsystems that it contains, but not within Model blocks, drag the Data Store Memory block into the subsystem.

Once you have added the Data Store Memory block, use its parameters to define the data store's properties. The Data store name property specifies the name of the data store that the Data Store Write and Data Store Read blocks access. See Data Store Memory documentation for details.

You can specify data store properties beyond those definable with Data Store Memory block parameters by selecting the Data store name must resolve to Simulink signal object option and using a signal object as the data store name. See Specifying Attributes Using a Signal Object for details.

Specifying Data Store Memory Block Attributes

A Data Store Memory block can inherit three data attributes from its corresponding Data Store Read and Data Store Write blocks. The inheritable attributes are:

  • Data type

  • Complexity

  • Sample time

However, allowing these attributes to be inherited can cause unexpected results that can be difficult to debug. To prevent such errors, use the Data Store Memory block dialog or a Simulink.Signal object to specify the attributes explicitly.

Specifying Attributes Using Block Parameters

You can use the Data Store Memory block dialog box or the Model Data Editor Data Stores tab (in the Modeling tab, click Model Data Editor) to specify the data type and complexity of a data store. In the next figure, the block dialog box sets the Data type to uint16 and the Signal type to real.

Specifying Attributes Using a Signal Object

You can use a Simulink.Signal object to specify data store attributes for a Data Store Memory block.

Tip

To establish an implicit data store, as described in Data Stores with Signal Objects, use the same general approach as when you explicitly associate a signal object with a Data Store Memory block.

The next figure shows a Data Store Memory block that specifies resolution to a Simulink.Signal object, named A. To use a signal object for the data store, set Data store name to the name of the signal object. For compile-time checking, open the Signal Attributes tab and select the Data store name must resolve to Simulink signal object parameter.

Alternatively, on the Model Data Editor Data Stores tab (on the Modeling tab, click Model Data Editor), while editing the data store name, click the nearby action button and select Create and Resolve. In the Create New Data dialog box, set Value to Simulink.Signal.

The signal object specifies values for all three data attributes that the data store would otherwise inherit. In this example, which defines a local data store, the Simulink.Signal object A has the following inherited properties: DataType, Complexity, and SampleTime. 

A =
 
Simulink.Signal (handle)
         CoderInfo: [1x1 Simulink.CoderInfo]
       Description: ''
          DataType: 'auto'
               Min: []
               Max: []
              Unit: ''
        Dimensions: 1
    DimensionsMode: 'auto'
        Complexity: 'auto'
        SampleTime: -1
      InitialValue: 0

For more information about specifying signal object attributes for local and global data stores, see Signal Object Attributes for Data Stores.

Use Model Data Editor to Configure Data Store Memory Blocks in a List.  Use the Data Stores tab in the Model Data Editor to configure the parameters of a Data Store Memory block. Use this technique to configure the data store without locating it in the model and to configure the data store together with other interface elements such as Inport and Outport blocks. The Model Data Editor also shows you information for Data Store Read and Data Store Write blocks in the same list.

To open the Model Data Editor, in the Modeling tab, click Model Data Editor. For information about using the Model Data Editor, see Configure Data Properties by Using the Model Data Editor.

Data Stores with Signal Objects

Creating the Data Store

To use a Simulink.Signal object to define a data store without using a Data Store Memory block, create the signal object in a workspace that is visible to every component that needs to access the data store. The name of the associated data store is the name of the signal object. You can use this name in Data Store Read and Data Store Write blocks, just as if it were the Data store name of a Data Store Memory block. Simulink® creates an associated data store when you use the signal object for data storage.

Local and Global Data Stores

You can use a Simulink.Signal object to define either a local or a global data store.

  • If you define the object in the MATLAB base workspace or a data dictionary, the result is a global data store, which is accessible in every model within Simulink, including all referenced models.

  • If you create the object in a model workspace, the result is a local data store, which is accessible at every level in a model except any referenced models.

Signal Object Attributes for Data Stores

Those data store attributes that a signal object does not define have the same default values that they do in a Data Store Memory block. The property values of a signal object used as a data store have different requirements, depending on whether the data store is local or global.

Once you have created the object, set the properties of the signal object to the values that you want the corresponding data store properties to have. For example, the following commands define a data store named Error in the MATLAB base workspace:

Error = Simulink.Signal;
Error.Description = 'Use to signal that subsystem output is invalid';
Error.DataType = 'boolean';
Error.Complexity = 'real';
Error.Dimensions = 1;
Error.SampleTime = 0.1;

Attributes for Local Data Stores.  For a local data store, for each parameter listed below, you can either set the value explicitly or you can have the data store inherit the value from the Data Store Write and Data Store Read blocks.

  • DataType

  • Complexity

  • SampleTime

To define a local data store using a Data Store Memory block, you can use a signal object for the Data store name parameter. For compile-time checking, in the Signal Attributes tab, select the Data store must resolve to Simulink signal object parameter. The Data store must resolve to Simulink signal object parameter causes Simulink to display an error and stop compilation if Simulink cannot find the signal object or if the signal object properties are inconsistent with the signal object properties.

Attributes for Global Data Stores.  The following table describes the parameter requirements for global data stores.

ParameterGlobal Data Store Value
DataTypeMust be set explicitly
ComplexityMust be set explicitly
DimensionsCan be set or inherited
SampleTimeCan be set or inherited

Modify Attributes of Data Store Defined by Signal Object.  You can use the Model Data Editor (in the Modeling tab, click Model Data Editor) to modify and inspect the attributes of data stores, Data Store Read, and Data Store Write blocks. On the Data Stores tab, to show the attributes of data stores that you define by using signal objects (such as Simulink.Signal), click the Show/refresh additional information button. Then, if a Data Store Read or Data Store Write block shown in the data table refers to a data store defined by a signal object, the table includes a row that corresponds to the object.

For more information about the Model Data Editor, see Configure Data Properties by Using the Model Data Editor.

Access Data Stores with Simulink Blocks

Writing to a Data Store

To set the value of a data store at each time step:

  1. Create an instance of a Data Store Write block at the level of your model that computes the value.

  2. Set the Data Store Write block Data store name parameter to the name of the data store to which you want it to write data.

  3. Connect the output of the block that computes the value to the input of the Data Store Write block.

Reading from a Data Store

To get the value of a data store at each time step:

  1. Create an instance of a Data Store Read block at the level of your model that needs the value.

  2. Set the Data Store Read block Data store name parameter to the name of the data store from which you want it to read.

  3. Connect the output of the Data Store Read block to the input of the block that needs the data store value.

Accessing a Global Data Store

When connected to a global data store (one that is defined by a signal object in the MATLAB workspace), a Data Store Read or Data Store Write block displays the word global above the data store name.

Order Data Store Access

About Data Store Access Order

To obtain correct results from data stores, you must control the order of execution of the data store’s reads and writes. If a data store’s read occurs before its write, latency is introduced into the algorithm: the read obtains the value that was computed and stored in the previous time step, rather than the value computed and stored in the current time step.

Such latency may cause the system to behave other than as designed, and in some cases may destabilize the system. Even if these problems do not occur, an uncontrolled access order could change from one release of Simulink to the next.

This section describes several strategies for explicitly controlling the order of execution of a data store’s reads and writes. See Data Store Diagnostics for techniques you can use to detect and correct potential data store errors without running simulations.

Ordering Access Using Function Call Subsystems

You can use function call subsystems to control the execution order of model components that access data stores. The next figure shows this technique:

The subsystem Before contains the Data Store Write, and the Stateflow® chart calls that subsystem before it calls the subsystem After, which contains the Data Store Read.

Ordering Access Using Block Priorities

You can embed data store reads and writes inside atomic subsystems or Model blocks whose priorities specify their relative execution order.

The Model block beforeDSM has a lower priority then afterDSM, so it is guaranteed to execute first. Since beforeDSM is atomic, all of its operations, including the Data Store Write, will execute prior to afterDSM and all of its operations, including the Data Store Read.

Data Stores with Buses and Arrays of Buses

Benefits of using data stores with buses and arrays of buses include:

  • Simplifying the model layout by associating multiple signals with a single data store

  • Producing generated code that represents the data in the store data as structures that reflect the bus hierarchy

  • Writing to and reading from data stores without creating data copies, which results in more efficient data access

You cannot use a bus or array of buses that contains:

  • Variable-dimension signals

  • Frame-based signals

Setting Up a Model to Use Data Stores with Buses and Arrays of Buses

This procedure applies to local and global data stores, and to data stores defined with a Data Store Memory block or a Simulink.Signal object. Before performing the procedure, you must understand how to use data stores in a model, as described in Create and Apply Data Stores.

To use buses and arrays of buses with data stores:

  1. Use the Bus Editor to define a bus object whose properties match the bus data that you want to write to and read from a data store. For details, see Create and Specify Simulink.Bus Objects.

  2. Add a data store (using a Data Store Memory block or a Simulink.Signal object) for storing the bus data.

  3. Specify the bus object as the data type of the data store. For details, see Specify a Bus Object Data Type.

  4. If you use a MATLAB structure for the initial value of the data store, then set Configuration Parameters > Diagnostics > Data Validity > Advanced parameters > Underspecified initialization detection to Simplified. For details, see Specify Initial Conditions for Bus Signals and Underspecified initialization detection.

  5. (Optional) Select individual bus elements to write to or read from a data store. For details, see Accessing Specific Bus and Matrix Elements.

Accessing Specific Bus and Matrix Elements

Selecting Specific Bus or Matrix Elements

By default, a model writes and reads all bus and matrix elements to and from a data store.

To select specific bus or matrix elements to write to or read from a data store, use the Element Assignment pane of the Data Store Write block and the Element Selection pane of the Data Store Read block . Selecting specific bus or matrix elements offers the following benefits:

  • Reducing the number of blocks in the model. For example, you can eliminate a Data Store Read and Bus Selector block pair or a Data Store Write and Bus Assignment block pair for each specific bus element that you want to access).

  • Faster simulation of models with large buses and arrays of buses.

Writing Specific Elements to a Data Store

Note

The following procedure describes how to use the Data Store Write block interface to write specific elements to a data store. You can also perform this task at the command line, using the DataStoreElements parameter to specify elements. For details, see Specification using the command line.

To assign specific bus or matrix elements to write to a data store:

  1. Select the Data Store Write block and in the parameters dialog box, select the Element Assignment pane. For example, suppose you are using a bus with a data store named DSM:

  2. Expand all the elements in the Signals in the bus list.

  3. Specify the elements that you want to write to the data store. For example:

    • In the Signals in the bus list, click B. Then click Select>> to select the element B.

    • To write all the elements of A2 (in the A nested bus), select A2[5x1]. Then click Select>>.

    • To write the second element of A2 in the C2 nested bus, select the A2[5x1] element. In the Specify element(s) to assign text box, edit the text to say DSM.C.C2.A2(2,1).

    For more examples, see Specifying Elements to Assign or Select.

  4. (Optional) Reorder the assigned elements, which changes the order of the ports of the Data Store Write block.

    • To reorder an assigned element, in the Assigned element(s) list, select the element that you want to move, and click Up or Down.

    • To remove an assigned element, click Remove.

  5. To apply the assigned elements, click OK.

    The Data Store Write block has a port for each assigned element. The names of the selected elements that correspond to each port appear in the block icon. If you assign several signals, these additions may diminish the readability of the model. To improve readability, you can expand the size of the block or create multiple Data Store Write blocks.

Reading Specific Elements from a Data Store

Reading specific elements from a data store involves very similar steps as described in Writing Specific Elements to a Data Store. The Data Store Read block differs slightly from the Data Store Write block. A Data Store Read block has:

  • An Element Selection pane instead of an Element Assignment pane

  • A Selected element(s) list instead of an Assigned element(s) list

Specifying Elements to Assign or Select

Use MATLAB matrix element syntax to specify specific elements. For details about specifying matrices in MATLAB, see Creating, Concatenating, and Expanding Matrices.

Note

To select matrix elements, you cannot use dynamic indexing with the Element Assignment and Element Selection panes of Data Store Read and Bus Assignment block pairs or Data Store Write and Bus Selector block pairs. You can, however, use a MATLAB Function block for dynamic indexing.

Valid element specifications.  The following table shows examples of valid syntax for specifying elements to assign or select. These examples use the A2 nested bus of the A bus, as shown in the bus hierarchy used in Writing Specific Elements to a Data Store.

Valid SyntaxDescription
DSM.A.A2(:,:)

Selects all elements in every dimension

DSM.A.A2([1,3,5],1)

Selects the first, third, and fifth elements

DSM.A.A2(2:5,1)

Selects the second through the fifth element

Invalid element specifications.  The following table shows examples of invalid syntax for specifying elements to assign or select. These examples use the A2 nested bus of the A bus, as shown in the bus hierarchy used in Writing Specific Elements to a Data Store.

Invalid SyntaxReason the Syntax Is Invalid
DSM.A.A2(:)

You must specify a colon for each dimension. For the bus hierarchy used in these examples, you must use two colons.

DSM.A.A2(2:end,1)

You cannot use the end operator.

DSM.A.A2(idx,1)

You cannot use variables to specify indices. Consider using a MATLAB Function block.

DSM.A.A2(-1,1)

The dimension –1 is not within the valid dimension bounds.

Specification using the command line.  To set the elements to write to or read from, use the DataStoreElements parameter. Use a pound sign (#) to delimit multiple elements. For example, select the Data Store Write or Data Store Read block for which you want to specify elements and enter a command such as:

set_param(gcb, 'DataStoreElements', 'DSM.A#DSM.B#DSM.C(3,4)')

This specification results in the block now having three ports corresponding to the elements that you specified.

Rename Data Stores

Rename Data Store Defined by Block

Rename a data store everywhere it is used by Data Store Read and Data Store Write blocks in a model.

  1. In a Data Store Memory block dialog box, type a new name in the Data store name box, and click Rename All.

  2. In the Rename All dialog box, confirm the new data store name in the New name field, and click OK

Note

You cannot use Rename All to rename a data store if you create a Simulink.Signal object in a workspace to control the code generated for the data store. Instead, you must rename the corresponding Simulink.Signal object using Model Explorer. For an example, see Rename Data Store Defined by Signal Object.

Rename Data Store Defined by Signal Object

This example shows how to rename a data store defined by a Simulink.Signal object. You can use Model Explorer to rename the object everywhere it is used by Data Store Read and Data Store Write blocks in a model or in a model reference hierarchy.

  1. Open the model sldemo_mdlref_dsm. The model creates a Simulink.Signal object ErrorCond in the MATLAB base workspace and uses the object as a global data store in a model reference hierarchy.

  2. Open Model Explorer.

  3. In the Model Hierarchy pane, select the base workspace.

  4. In the Contents pane, right-click the data store ErrorCond and select Rename All.

  5. In the Select a system dialog box, click the name of the model sldemo_mdlref_dsm to select it as the context for renaming the data store ErrorCond.

  6. Select Search in referenced models since ErrorCond is a global data store that is used in a referenced model. Click OK.

    The Update diagram to include recent changes check box is cleared by default to save time by avoiding unnecessary model diagram updates. Select the check box to incorporate recent changes you made to the model by forcing a diagram update.

  7. Click OK in response to the message to update the model diagram.

    Since you just opened the model, you must update the model diagram at least once before renaming a variable such as ErrorCond. You could have selected Update diagram to include recent changes in the Select a system dialog box to force an initial diagram update, though you typically use that option when you make changes to the model while performing multiple variable renaming operations.

  8. In the Rename All dialog box, type the new name for the data store in the New name box and click OK.

Customized Data Store Access Functions in Generated Code

Embedded Coder® provides a storage class that you can use to specify customized data store access functions in generated code. See Organize Parameter Data into a Structure by Using Struct Storage Class (Embedded Coder) and Access Data Through Functions with Storage Class GetSet (Embedded Coder).

See Also

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