Temporal constrained objects: Application and implementation

We present a novel programming concept called temporal constrained objects for modeling of dynamic systems. It is an extension of the paradigm of constrained objects which provides a principled approach to modeling complex engineering systems based upon two main principles: a compositional specification of the structure of the system, using objects, and a declarative specification of its behavior, using constraints. A novel feature of temporal constrained objects is the series variable, the sequence of whose values is determined by constraints that include metric temporal operators. The emergent behavior of a dynamic system is determined through a process of time-based simulation and constraint satisfaction at each step. Each class definition for a temporal constrained object is translated into a Prolog rule with constraint-solving capability. In order to improve the performance for long simulations, a partial evaluation technique is adopted for optimized code generation. This paper describes the syntax of a language called TCOB along with several examples, our objective being to demonstrate the benefits of the programming paradigm. TCOB has been implemented and all examples presented in this paper were tested using this implementation. An overview of the translation as well as partial execution and its performance improvements are presented in the paper.