A framework for evaluating the effectiveness of real-time object-oriented models

The design of a real-time system needs to incorporate methods specifically developed to represent the temporal properties of the system under consideration. Real-time systems contain time and event driven actions. Structured design methods provided a reasonable set of abstractions for design of time and event driven factors in real-time designs. As program complexity, size, and time to market pressure grows, the real-time community migrated towards object-oriented technology. Evidence suggests that object-oriented technology in non-real-time systems is most effective in abstraction, modeling, implementation, and reuse of software systems. Many design models and methods exist for object-oriented real-time designs. However, the selection process of a model for a particular application remains a tedious task. This paper introduces an analysis framework that can be applied to a design model to evaluate its effectiveness according to desired performance specifications. To illustrate our approach, we present a case study using the popular automotive cruise control example on two real-time object-oriented models.