Implementation Strategies for Time Constraint Monitoring

An event monitor is a part of a real-time system that can be used to check if the system follows the specifications posed on its behavior. This dissertation covers an approach to event monitoring where such specifications (represented by time constraints) are represented by graphs. Not much work has previously been done on designing and implementing constraint graph-based event monitors. In this work, we focus on presenting an extensible design for such an event monitor. We also evaluate different data structure types (linked lists, dynamic arrays, and static arrays) that can be used for representing the constraint graphs internally. This is done by creating an event monitor implementation, and conducting a number of benchmarks where the time used by the monitor is measured. The result is presented in the form of a design specification and a summary of the benchmark results. Dynamic arrays are found to be the generally most efficient, but advantages and disadvantages of all the data structure types are discussed