Prototyping real time engineering systems using Hatley & Pirbhai's requirement model

Abstract

A research programme is underway which is aimed at establishing ways of prototyping real time engineering systems using existing concurrent programming systems. The role of formal techniques in the development of prototypes, and its subsequent re-use in a well engineered product, is also an important theme. The first prototypes have used the Hatley & Pirbhai Transformation Schema, and have been built using Ada. A case study is described. The research shows that a prototype based on Hatley & Pirbhai's requirementModel would require a significant structural overhead, mainly because of the model 'execution' assumptions. Also Ada is an appropriate language to use, mainly because the tasking overhead is too great, but also because the communications model differs from Hatley & Pirbhai's model. Some future research directions are indicated.