STATEMATE and cruise control: a case study

The STATEMATE system uses a state transition formalism embodied in activity and control charts and supported by simulation, analysis, and documentation tools. The authors describe its application to an automobile cruise control system, emphasizing the methodology lessons of the case study. It is concluded that the strength of the STATEMATE approach lies in the emergence of a set of methods that can be used to construct an incremental system design One possible way to view the design process is as a top-down method where a functional approach is intermixed with the analysis of system functions at each level. It is argued that a design produced using a behavioural methodology for the expressed purpose of simulation will be considerably different from a design produced using a functional method. A strong feature of STATEMATE as a representative of the class of CASE systems is its simulation capability.<>