Automatic generation of basic behavior schemas from UML class diagrams

Abstract

The specification of a software system must include all relevant static and dynamic aspects of the domain. Dynamic aspects are usually specified by means of a behavioral schema consisting of a set of system operations that the user may execute to update the system state. To be useful, such a set must be complete (i.e. through these operations, users should be able to modify the population of all elements in the class diagram) and executable (i.e. for each operation, there must exist a system state over which the operation can be successfully applied). A manual specification of these operations is an error-prone and time-consuming activity. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present a strategy for the automatic generation of a basic behavior schema. Operations in the schema are drawn from the static aspects of the domain as defined in the UML class diagram and take into account possible dependencies among them to ensure the completeness and executability of the operations.We believe our approach is especially useful in a Model-Driven Development setting, where the full implementation of the system is derived from its specification. In this context, our approach facilitates the definition of the behavioral specification and ensures its quality obtaining, as a result, an improved code generation phase.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Generating operation specifications from UML class diagrams: A model transformation approach

“…The work reported here extends our previous work [7] in several directions. First, the input of our method is now a UML class diagram that may contain enriched association definitions.…”

“…In both cases, the results have been similar: a 69% of the operations specified for EmpTraining and CMA are completely generated by our method and a high percentage of the remaining ones (21% for EmpTraining and 31% for CMA) are partially generated as well. We refer the reader to [7] for a more detailed description of these experiments.…”

“…As a first step, we have structured our transformation in an ATL module that defines a new model 7 . The header of the transformation within the eclipse-based ATL IDE is the following: Although input (IN) and output (OUT) metamodels can be seen in the transformation specification, both of them are in fact associated to the same metamodel when the transformation is launched.…”

Automatic Business Process Model Extension to Repair Constraint Violations

“…However, none of them is able to derive the repairing activities that need to be applied, as we do. In a dierent way, some approaches are meant to, given a schema with some constraints, build operations for inserting/deleting/updating instances in the schema, and completing the behavior of the operation with additional updates to satisfy all the constraints [1,23].…”

Using the Interaction Flow Modelling Language for Generation of Automated Front-End Tests

“…UML models have normally been used for the process of automated code generation from the model, for example [12,1,13]. The same applies for the generation of test cases from the tested application model.…”