Integration of scheduling analysis into UML based development processes through model transformation

Abstract

The complexity of embedded systems and their safety requirements have risen significantly in recent years. Models and the model based development approach help to keep overview and control of the development. Nevertheless, a support for the analysis of non-functional requirements, e.g. the scheduling, based on development models and consequently the integration of these analysis technologies into a development process exists only sporadically. The problem is that the analysis tools use different metamodels than the development tools. Therefore, a remodeling of the system in the format of the analysis tool or a model transformation is necessary to be able to perform an analysis. Here, we introduce a scheduling analysis view as a part of the development model, which is a MARTE annotated UML model to describe a system from the scheduling behavior point of view. In addition, we present a transformation from this annotated UML model to the scheduling analysis tool SymTA/S and a treatment of the analysis results to integrate scheduling analysis into a development process. With our approach it is not necessary to remodel the system in an analysis tool to profit from the analysis and its results. Additionally, we illustrate our approach in a case study on a parallel robot controller.