Case Study Simulator (C1)
Goal
The goal of this case study is to evaluate specific formal methods and
programming languages with respect to their usefulness in a given
application domain.
Context
This case study is performed by members of
subproject C1
of the
Sonderforschungsbereich 501.
It is based on previous
work
of
Team 1
with representatives of all projects of this Sonderforschungsbereich.
The application domain, within which the case study is performed, is
house automation systems.
Work done
The actual task was to describe formally an event-driven simulator for heat
flow within a building. Thereby opening and closing of windows and doors
and the weather conditions have to be considered. It should be possible to
maintain a strict binding of simulation and real time or to run the
simulation faster than real time by a constant factor.
Starting from an informal problem description given by a (fictitious)
customer, a requirements specification and a functional design of the
system has been derived. This was done following the book of Braek and
Haugen: Engineering Real Time Systems, Prentice Hall, 1993. An
object oriented notation, Message Sequence Charts (MSC), and
Specification and Description Language (SDL)
have been used to produce this documents.
The following documents are available (in english):
- Problem description (35KB, gzipped Postscript)
Informal Problem description of the Customer. Contains statement of problem
and some of the physics of a building.
- Requirements
Specification (83KB, gzipped Postscript)
Contains a clarified problem statement, abstract concept model of
simulation, static and dynamic interface descriptions of the objects
occuring in the domain. An object oriented notation and message sequence
charts are used.
- Functional Design (79KB, gzipped Postscript)
The required functionality of the kernel of the simulator is given as a set
of SDL processes. (Warning: About 90 Pages of SDL descriptions!)
- Lessons Learned
T. Deiß, T. Hillenbrand,
A Case Study on the Use of SDL (63 KB, gzipped Postscript),
SFB Bericht 03/97, SFB 501, Fachbereich Informatik Universität
Kaiserslautern, 1997.
A technical report containing the results with respect to usefulness of the
description techniques and the methodology used. This report is self
containing, the other documents are not necessary to understand it.
- User Manual
The User Manual of the implemented system.
Current and Future Work
At the moment, the functional design is implemented using the language
Erlang.
It shall be evaluated whether this language is suited for this application
and more generally for implementation of SDL descriptions.
Further Information
For further information please contact the persons involved:
Navigation:
deiss@informatik.uni-kl.de