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Specification of Reactive Hardware/Software Systems - Electronic ...

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130 Concepts for the Integration <strong>of</strong> <strong>Specification</strong> and Design<br />

Behaviour<br />

Maintenance<br />

5.7.2 Abstraction Levels<br />

Initial<br />

Requirements<br />

Reliability<br />

Standards<br />

Timing<br />

Test<br />

Conceptual<br />

(Object classes)<br />

Unified<br />

Model<br />

Manufacturing<br />

Packaging<br />

Other views..<br />

Safety<br />

Architecture<br />

Legislation<br />

Figure 5.6: Multidisciplinary Views<br />

Over time a specification model grows. The amount <strong>of</strong> detail grows during the specification<br />

development. Traditionally, adding detail is called refinement. Over time there<br />

is a vertical refinement from very abstract to more detailed. Figure 5.7 shows a visualisation<br />

<strong>of</strong> three levels <strong>of</strong> detail. We could interpret these levels as so-called levels <strong>of</strong><br />

abstraction. However we do not do this. In general, it is difficult to define or distinguish<br />

individual abstraction levels. The number <strong>of</strong> levels to be distinguished appears to be a<br />

rather arbitrary choice. This problem becomes worse when we take multidisciplinary<br />

views into account. Different disciplines may produce a different number <strong>of</strong> abstraction<br />

levels. This leads to conflicts and inconsistencies in a model. Therefore we need a more<br />

precise definition <strong>of</strong> the concept <strong>of</strong> ’abstraction level’.<br />

We can define abstraction level based on the cluster hierarchy in Object Instance Models.<br />

The highest level <strong>of</strong> abstraction is the context level where the system is considered to be<br />

a whole. This is level zero. A system is visualised as a cluster that represents the system<br />

boundary. In the next lower level (level one) the system is decomposed into clusters<br />

and/or process objects. The lowest level <strong>of</strong> abstraction is reached when there are no<br />

more composites in the form <strong>of</strong> clusters. The lowest level contains process objects solely.<br />

In our approach, the growth process in Figure 5.7, does not necessarily show the growth<br />

in the number <strong>of</strong> abstraction levels. During analysis, objects can be found on various<br />

levels <strong>of</strong> abstraction. Object instance modelling and architecture modelling can be done<br />

’simultaneously’ on various levels <strong>of</strong> abstraction. When object instance models are far

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