Object-oriented behaviour modelling for real-time design

The commonly recognised weakness of modern object-oriented design and implementation methodologies lies in their superficial treatment of inter-object dynamics. This paper addresses the problem of behaviour modelling by suggesting utilisation of the concept of high-level Petri nets to model object interactions. The Petri net representation creates an additional access layer of object architecture, providing a meta-level object control with the sequencing of method execution. It is argued that the two layer object view presented allows one, both mathematically and pragmatically, to achieve a more precise and flexible description of inter-object dynamics. The usefulness of the approach is demonstrated by some illustrative examples.