A toolset in Java2 for modelling, prototyping and implementing communicating real-time state machines
This paper proposes an approach to the development of real-time systems which depends on Communicating Real-Time State Machines (CRSMs) as the specification language, and on a customisable actor kernel for prototyping, analysis and implementation of a modelled system. CRSMs offer an intuitive and distributed specification of a system in terms of a collection of co-operating state machines interacting with one another through timed CSP-like I/O commands. On the other hand, the underlying actor framework provides a time-sensitive scheduling structure which can be tuned to CSRMs in order to support temporal validation through assertions on the recorded time-stamped event histories. The approach can be practically used through a graphical environment (jCRSM) which has been realised using Java2. The toolset facilitates editing, testing and implementation in Java of CRSM systems. The proposed methodology is novel in that it provides a seamless system development life cycle where the specification, analysis, design and implementation phases are unified by a common representation of machines in terms of actors. The paper demonstrates the use of CRSM based software components by means of examples. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
java prototyping actors software components timing constraints finite state machines executable specifications temporal analysis through assertions graphical tools