DERAF: A High-Level Aspects Framework for Distributed Embedded Real-Time Systems Design

Distributed Embedded Real-time Systems (DERTS) have several requirements directly related to characteristics that are difficult to handle when a pure object-oriented method is used for their development. These requirements are called Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) and refer to orthogonal properties, conditions, and restrictions that are spread out over the system. Pure object-oriented methods do not address successfully those concerns, so new technologies, like aspect orientation, are being applied in order to fulfill this gap. This work presents a proposal to use aspect orientation in the analysis and design of DERTS. To support our proposal, we created DERAF (Distributed Embedded Real-time Aspects Framework), an extensible high-level framework (i.e. implementation-independent) to handle NFR of DERTS. DERAF is used together with RT-UML in the design phase, aiming to separate the handling of non-functional from functional requirements in the Model Driven Design of DERTS. A qualitative assessment of DERAF separation of concerns is also presented.