UML-driven Information Systems and their Formal Integration Validation and Distribution ⋆

Abstract. Being the de-facto standard (object-oriented-OO) method(-logy) for software-intensive systems development, UML with its different diagrams and supporting tools represent nowadays the mostly adopted software-engineering means for information systems (IS). Nevertheless, due to this wide-acceptance by all organization stakeholders several enhancements at the modelling level are required before adventuring into further implementation phases. The coherence and complementarity between different diagrams have to tackled; On the basic of such endeavored coherent global view, the consistency and validation of the whole IS conceptual models are to undertaken; and last but not least as current information systems are mostly networked and concurrent, UML-driven have to cater for intrinsic distribution and concurrency. To leverage UML-driven IS conceptual modelling towards these crucial enhancements, we propose a semi-automatic intermediate abstract phase before any implementation, we govern by a rigorous component-based operational and visual conceptual model. Referred to as CO-NETS, this specification/validation formalism is based on a tailored formal integration of most OO concepts and mechanisms enhanced by modularity principles into a variant of algebraic Petri Nets. For rapid-prototyping purposes, CO-NETS is semantically interpreted into rewriting logic. This UML-CO-NETS proposal for distributed IS rigorous development is illustrated through a non-trivial case-study for production systems.