On the Suitability of Estelle for Multimedia Systems

Formal Description Techniques have been widely used for the specification of traditional networked applications. They have not been applied to the specification of new applications such as multimedia systems yet. In this paper, we examine the FDT Estelle with respect to its suitability for multimedia system specification and automatic derivation of efficient implementations. We show that it is possible to specify certain aspects of multimedia systems, but that Estelle is not sufficient for others. The derived implementations often perform badly. We show the reasons and propose to use a slightly modified Estelle syntax and semantics to solve the problems. The implemented solution was tested successfully

Real-Time Estelle

Estelle is one of the standardized Formal Description Techniques for the specification of communication protocols and distributed systems. Unfortunately, Estelle is not capable to express real-time requirements or characteristics of services or protocols which is especially important in the context of distributed multimedia systems. In this paper, we introduce an extension to Estelle called Real-Time Estelle that allows to describe real-time systems. We introduce the syntax of the new language and propose both an operational and a descriptive semantics. Examples show the usefulness of the approach. We also discuss ways to implement Real-Time Estelle specifications

On the Suitability of Estelle for Multimedia Systems

Formal Description Techniques have been widely used for the speci cation of traditional networked applications. They have not been applied to the speci cation of new applications such asmultimedia systems yet. In this paper, we examine the FDT Estelle with respect to its suitability for multimedia system speci cation and automatic derivation of e cient implementations. We show that it is possible to specify certain aspects of multimedia systems, but that Estelle is not su cient for others. The derived implementations often perform badly. We show the reasons and propose to use a slightly modi ed Estelle syntax and semantics to solve the problems. The implemented solution was tested successfully