Purpose:

The purposes of the assignment:
1. Understanding a real-time and time-critical system
2. Understanding Entity Relationship Diagram and Data Flow Diagram in terms of a realtime software system
3. Analyzing a real-time system and the flow of the corresponding software

Description:

The Rental platform should work according to the following rules:

Step-1: Both Hosts and Guests can register with authentication details

Step-2: Hosts can upload property details (e.g., daily rent, available facilities and number of guests allowed)

Step-3: Guests can enter the system after successful authentication

Step-4: Guests can make booking request by indicating length of stay, number of accompanying guests and credit card information

Step-5: Rental platform verifies and charges the credit card, and sends confirmation to both the host and the guest.

Step-6: The rental platform holds the money until the guest arrives and later leaves the property.

Step-7: The rental platform deducts the service fees and forwards the rest to the host after the guest departs.

Your task is to do a Real-Time Structured Analysis for the Rental platform considering the aforementioned steps. You are to present your analysis including the following information:

1. An External Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) indicating relationships of the Rental platform and the other external entities in the system.

2. Data and Control Flow Diagrams (DFD/CFDs) - to sufficient detail that only a single task is carried out by each process at the lowest level. You should show the control events that occur on the same diagrams. Use the real-time extensions for control flows etc. shown in the lecture notes. You need to determine when and where events will occur. For example, whenever a piece of data becomes available it may need a control event to let the system know that it is available. These events must be clearly shown in these DFD/CFD diagrams and then handled in the Control Specification (CSPEC).

3. Process Specifications (Pspecs) - a psuedo-code or similar design language specification is required for each process at the lowest level.

4. Control Specifications (Cspec) - use combinational or sequential FSMs as required, presented in an appropriate format. The idea is that the Cspec will completely describe how each and every event or control flow is handled in the system. You need to provide both "Process Activation Table" and "State Machine Diagram".

5. A Data Dictionary is required to adequately describe each name or special term used in the analysis, which includes process names, data flow names, control flow names etc. If you think further information is required make reasonable assumptions and clearly state these in the submission.