Modelling Recursive Calls with UML State Diagrams

One of the principal uses of UML is the modelling of synchronous object-oriented software systems, in which the behaviour of each of several classes is modelled using a state diagram. UML permits a transition of the state diagram to show both the event which causes the transition (typically, the fact that the object receives a message) and the object’s reaction (typically, the fact that the object sends a message). UML’s semantics for state diagrams is “run to completion”. We show that this can lead to anomalous behaviour, and in particular that it is not possible to model recursive calls, in which an object receives a second message whilst still in the process of reacting to the first. Drawing on both ongoing work by the UML2.0 submitters and recent theoretical work [1,6], we propose a solution to this problem using state diagrams in two complementary ways

Exploration games for UML software design

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has become the standard language for the design of object-oriented software systems over the past decade. Even though there exist various tools which claim to support design with UML, their functionality is usually focused on drawing UML diagrams and generating code from the UML model. The task of choosing a suitable design which fulfils the requirements still has to be accomplished by the human designer alone. The aim of this thesis is to develop concepts for UML design tools which assist the modeller in improving the system design and requirements incrementally. For this approach a variant of formal games called exploration games is introduced as underlying technique. Exploration games can be defined on the basis of incomplete and imprecise UML models as they occur frequently in practice. The designer repeatedly plays an exploration game to detect flaws or incompleteness in the design and its specification, which are both incorporated in the game definition. At any time the game definition can be incremented by the modeller which allows him to react to the discoveries made during a play and experiment with new design solutions. Exploration games can be applied to UML in different variants. For each variant must be specified how the UML diagrams are used to set up the game and how the semantic variation points of UML should be interpreted. Furthermore some parts of the game definition may not be contained in the UML model and have to be provided separately. The emphasis of this thesis is on game variants which make use of UML diagrams for modelling system behaviour, especially state machines and activity diagrams. A prototypical implementation demonstrates how the concepts developed in this thesis can be put into practice. The tool supports the user in defining, playing and incrementing a game. Moreover it can compute winning strategies for the players and may act as opponent of the modeller. As example a game variant based on UML state machines has been implemented. The architecture that has been chosen for the tool leaves room for extension by additional game variants and alternative algorithms

A design environment for mobile applications

In this paper we show how high-level UML models of mobile computing applications can be analysed for classical performance measures such as throughput. The approach proceeds by compiling the UML model into a representation in the formally-defined modelling language of PEPA nets. The compilation process and subsequent performance analysis based on numerical solution of a Continuous-Time Markov Chain is supported by a software tool, the Choreogra-pher design platform. Choreographer interoperates with popular UML tools by reading and writing UML models in the XML Metadata Interchange format (XMI).

A design environment for mobile applications

In this paper we show how high-level UML models of mobile computing applications can be analysed for classical performance measures such as throughput. The approach proceeds by compiling the UML model into a representation in the formally-defined modelling language of PEPA nets. The compilation process and subsequent performance analysis based on numerical solution of a Continuous-Time Markov Chain is supported by a software tool, the Choreographer design platform. Choreographer interoperates with popular UML tools by reading and writing UML models in the XML Metadata Interchange format (XMI).