SESAG: an object-oriented application framework for real-time systems

Advancements in hardware and software technologies have made possible the design of real-time systems and applications where stringent timing constraints are imposed on critical tasks. The design of such systems is more complex than that of temporally unrestricted systems because system correctness depends on the satisfaction of functional as well as temporal requirements. To aid users in correctly and efficiently designing systems, object-oriented frameworks provide a useful environment for significant reuse and reduction in design effort. In contrast to other application domains, there has been relatively little work on an application framework for the design of real-time systems. Facing the growing need for real-time applications, we propose a novel application framework called SESAG, which consists of five components, namely Specifier, Extractor, Scheduler, Allocator, and Generator. Within SESAG, several design patterns are proposed and used for the development of real-time applications. A new evaluation metric called relative design effort is proposed for evaluating SESAG. Experiences in using SESAG show a significant increase in design productivity through design reuse and a significant decrease in design time and effort. Two complex application examples have been developed using SESAG and evaluated using the new evaluation metric. The examples demonstrate relative design efforts of at most 18% of the design efforts required by conventional methods. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.