Design transformation and prototyping using multiple viewpoints

One of the problems in designing the software for large real-time systems is to ensure that the eventual implementation corresponds to the design specifications. In this paper we describe how the process of automatically transforming a systematic (and diagrammatical) design specification into an 'intermediate' outline of a formal specification can be enhanced by including information about the intended behaviour of the system. Since the formal specification generated is itself executable, this means that the designer can easily generate quite extensive prototypes as a means of exploring his or her ideas, and these can then be used as a more comprehensive basis for creating the eventual implementation. We also explore the effects of adding information about timing and constraints to the behavioural description, and show the consequences of this in terms of creating further enhancements to the formal specification produced from our system.