Real-time systems development: from structured analysis to object-oriented design

For their simplicity and maturity, structured methods are most widely used for modeling and analysis of real time systems. These methods, however, lack full support for those important features of real time systems like execution control, time constraint, safety, and fault tolerance. In addition, they are not formal enough for verification of system properties. To address their shortcomings, we present an approach that describes those important features in an enhanced DFD model. The model also supports sufficient formality for the verification of system properties. To take advantage of object oriented techniques, the translation of the model to an object oriented design model is then presented.