NFR Framework for Generic Real Time Systems

Real-time systems are organized in terms of abstraction levels which are required to maintain high integrity and dependability. Complex real-time systems require conceptual models that can demonstrate the system scenario as a whole. This paper focuses on nonfunctional requirements (NFR), which need to be captured and analyzed at the initial phases of the software development process. The NFRs can be classified and organized in order to have better representation. NFRs typically express the system behavior with satisfaction of constraints that must be met. NFRs are associated with functional requirements with additional constraint or attribute that addresses the abilities of system. The paper presents a NFR framework to capture and maintain NFRs for real-time systems. We use taxonomy to classify NFRs into primary and secondary NFRs. Primary NFRs are those that contain secondary NFRs as a subset. Depending on the static and dynamic views of the system leads to static and dynamic NFRs. Dynamic NFRs incorporates abstract concepts such as portability, reliability and interoperability, while static NFRs incorporates concrete concepts such as accuracy, scalability, precision. As the requirement population has to be catalogued in terms of configuration management, we use graph-based traceability mechanism to address the issue of requirement change.