View article

The paper presents a novel approach to the automatic identification of objects/classes from a system specification. The methodology is aimed at the development of distributed real time systems (DRTS), especially those conceived for industrial automation applications. UML is used as the modeling language in conjunction with an extended version of traditional DFD (E-DFD), that conveys information on flow type (data or control) and on process complexity and timing constraints. E-DFDs are mapped into a graph and a tool is used to carry out an automatic graph partition, which allows the identification of a set of objects that constitute, from the design and test points of view, the 'best-fitted' architecture. To validate the proposed methodology, a case study is presented and analyzed, comparing two design strategies.