Statecharts

Abstract

So far it could be observed how some shortcomings of finite automata used for DEDS modeling were overcome by Petri nets and Grafcet. This is mainly due to the latter’s ability to specify the parallel activities of subsystem states and concurrency of events. However, a certain imperfection of both persists. Difficulties in visualizing large and complex DEDS require to apply a sort of hierarchical decomposition. Another tool for coping with this problem is statecharts (Havel 1987 and Fogel 1997, 1998).

Statecharts use the same notions as the tools mentioned above, namely state and event, and are based on the basic transition system as well. They represent structure and dynamic behavior in a drawn graphical form. Their set-theoretic and functional description is possible, too. The next section introduces their concepts and Section 11.3 presents their applications to DEDS.