A Generic Tool for Tracing Executions Back to a DSML's Operational Semantics

International audienceThe increasing complexity of software development requires rigorously defined domain specific modeling languages (DSML). Model-driven engineering (\mde) allows users to define a DSML's syntax in terms of metamodels. The behaviour of a language can also be described, either operationally, or via transformations to other languages (e.g., by code generation). If the first approach requires to redefine analysis tools for each DSML (simulator, model-checker...), the second approach allows to reuse existing tools in the targeted language. However, the second approach (also called translational semantics) imply that the results (e.g., a program crash log, or a counterexample returned by a model checker) may not be straightforward to interpret by the users of a DSML. We propose in this paper a generic tool for formally tracing such analysis/execution results back to the original DSML's syntax and operational semantics, and we illustrate it on xSPEM, a timed process modeling language

Exception Handling Patterns for Process Modeling

International audienceProcess modeling allows for analysis and improvement of processes that coordinate multiple people and tools working together to carry out a task. Process modeling typically focuses on the normative process, that is, how the collaboration transpires when everything goes as desired. Unfortunately, real-world processes rarely proceed that smoothly. A more complete analysis of a process requires that the process model also include details about what to do when exceptional situations arise. We have found that, in many cases, there are abstract patterns that capture the relationship between exception handling tasks and the normative process. Just as object-oriented design patterns facilitate the development, documentation, and maintenance of object-oriented programs, we believe that process patterns can facilitate the development, documentation, and maintenance of process models. In this paper, we focus on the exception handling patterns that we have observed over many years of process modeling. We describe these patterns using three process modeling notations: UML 2.0 Activity Diagrams, BPMN, and Little-JIL. We present both the abstract structure of the pattern as well as examples of the pattern in use. We also provide some preliminary statistical survey data to support the claim that these patterns are found commonly in actual use and discuss the relative merits of the three notations with respect to their ability to represent these patterns

Artifact or Process Guidance, an Empirical Study

International audienceCASE tools provide artifact guidance and process guidance to enhance model quality and reduce their development time. These two types of guidance seem complementary since artifact guidance supports defect detection after each iterative development step, while process guidance supports defect prevention during each such step. But can this intuition be empirically confirmed? We investigated this question by observing developers refactoring a UML model. This study attempted to assess how general were the observations made by Cass and Osterweil on the benefits of guidance to build such model from scratch. It turns out that they do not generalize well: while their experiment observed a benefit on quality and speed with process guidance (but none with artefact guidance), we, in contrast, observed a benefit on quality at the expense of speed with artefact guidance (but none with process guidance)