SARA aided design of software for concurrent systems
A set of tools to support a structured multilevel design procedure for software or hardware development is described. This interactive computer-aided system, called SARA (Systems ARchitect's Apprentice), provides languages to help a designer form useful abstractions that can be manipulated and tested in a disciplined way. SARA supports both a bottom-up (abstraction) procedure and a top-down partitioning (refinement) procedure. The procedures are requirement driven. Models are created with a small number of primitives. Explicit flow behavior can be expressed by control nodes. This paper concentrates on the SARA methodology as applied to software. The central problem is the set of tools and procedures to be brought to bear on building possibly concurrent software systems that reliably carry out the designer's intent. The reader is taken through the key steps of two example designs, a synchronized sender-receiver and a fast fourier transformer. Following an informal statement of need, the design universe is partitioned into the system to be designed and its environment. An initial behavioral model fixes all assumptions under which the design is to proceed. Requirements establish evaluation criteria for the system. After top-down levels of designer-created behavior, there is a final composition step to produce PL/1 code. 10 figures. (RWR)
- OSTI ID:
- 5478087
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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