Deriving objects from use cases in real-time embedded systems

In recent years, a number of use case-driven processes have emerged for the development of real-time embedded systems. In these processes, once requirements have been defined by use cases, the next step is usually to identify from that use cases, the central objects in the system and describing how they interact with one another. However, identifying objects/classes from the requirements is both a critical and hard task. This is mainly due to the lack of pragmatic technique that steers such a task. In this article, we present a systematic approach to identify objects from the use case model for the real-time embedded systems. After hierarchically decomposing the system into its parts, we first transform the use case structured-text style into an activity diagram, which may be reused in the next development activities. Second, we use the derived activity diagram for identifying objects. With the behavioural model, an object model can be viewed as a first cut at a design model, and is thus an essential input when the system is shaped in design and design implementation.