Top-down development of real-time software specification

Top down development has been well known to manage the complexity of characterizing large systems. The paper presents a top down object oriented approach to formal specification of real time software which is often large and complex for modern real time applications. The method creates an abstract object interaction model to describe objects in the application domain and their structure and behavior. An object specification model is then derived from the object interaction model to formally specify the objects. The method is applied to a simple illustrative example, the specification of a real time house heating system