Research

Requirements and Specification

The primary objective of the requirements and specification topic area of the DCSC is to reduce rework due to flaws in the early stages of development of complex real-time computing systems.

The work is divided into two strands:

Strand 1 - to develop traceability structures which record the design rationale relationships between development artefacts to aid change impact analysis and to improve inter-development team coordination and communications.

Current work involves:

• The specification of a traceable development contract which coordinates the transfer of information between teams.
• The investigation of traceability "meta-data" to support the establishment of dependencies between diverse software tools.

Strand 2 - to develop notations and techniques for recording and analysing the potential timing behaviour of systems to help ensure that the original requirements are met.

Current work involves:

• The specification of an abstract but rigorous notation that can be used early in the development process to record the timing constraints of a system.
• The investigation of modelling techniques to analyse these constraints to ensure that they are consistent. For example to show that intermediate deadlines on computations enable the end to end deadlines across the system to be met.

The aim is to ensure that the techniques have a sound scientific basis, and to build on existing processes and tools within the companies. The work will be evaluated through industrial case studies.