Real-Time Specifications and Object-Oriented Analysis

Distributed real time systems design and development based on formal specification techniques can lead to the implementation of high quality systems. This has led to a growing interest in research into the problems associated with the industrial applications. In fact. recent studies have shown that the cost of detecting and removing software errors increases considerably as the activities move from the specification of requirements towards the implementation phase. In particular it has been evaluated that the cost for removing an error from a system specification is far less expensive than the cost of removing one from a system during the integration testing. This paper introduces an ongoing project addressed to the specification of distributed real time systems taking care of information to be processed during the design, development and operation of each system component. In particular, in order to address typical requirements found in the industrial application environment. an automaton object model has been introduced to extend the object oriented technique for modeling applications. The model is described using the Javaprogramming language it being fully object oriented. Such a choice provides the project with a fully portable and flexible support for the development of application models.