DCHARTS, A FORMALISM FOR MODELING AND SIMULATION BASED DESIGN OF REACTIVE SOFTWARE SYSTEMS

Huining Feng

http://msdl.cs.mcgill.ca/people/tfeng/

Other formats: .tar.gz, .pdf


Supervisor: Professor Hans Vangheluwe

February, 2004


School of Computer Science
McGill University, Montréal, Canada







A Master's Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for
the Master of Science Degree








Copyright © 2004 by Huining Feng
All rights reserved

Abstract

DCharts, a formalism for modeling and simulation of complex reactive software systems, is proposed and studied. The DCharts formalism is based on UML statecharts and DEVS, but provides better modularity and expressiveness. DCharts semantics is rigorously defined in both an operational way and in a denotational way. Abstract, textual, and visual syntax for DCharts are presented.

SVM, a DCharts simulator implemented in Python, is presented. It accepts textual model descriptions and simulates them. Multiple types of simulations, as well as real-time execution, are discussed in detail with examples. Model verification is supported by means of repeated simulations in SVM and rule-checking of the simulation traces with extended regular expressions.

SCC is a tool to synthesize executable code from DCharts models. It statically optimizes the models to achieve high run-time performance. Multiple target languages are supported.

Applications of the DCharts formalism are studied, by means of the the above-mentioned tools. They demonstrate how DCharts are ready for practical use.