Guided Merging of Sequence Diagrams

Abstract

Abstract. The employment of optimistic model versioning systems allows multiple developers of a team to work independently on their local copies of a software model. The merging process towards one consolidated version obviously turns out to be challenging when performed without any tool support. Recently, several sophisticated approaches for model merging have been presented. However, even for multi-view modeling languages like UML, which distribute the information on the system under development over different diagrams, diagrams of different views are merged independently of each other. Hence, inconsistencies between different views are likely to be introduced into the merged model. We suggest to solve this problem by exploiting information stored in one view as constraint for the computation of a consolidated version of another view. More specifically, we demonstrate how state machines can guide the integration of parallel changes performed on a sequence diagram. We give a concise formal description of this problem and suggest a translation to propositional logic.

Weaving True-Concurrent Aspects Using Constraint Solvers

“…A message always relates different events by causality (rule 8). 2 An event e 1 ∈ Ev e1 = Const ('e1',Ev) 3 Set of instances or lifelines I I = DeclareSort ('I') 4 An instance i 1 ∈ I i1 = Const ('i1',I) 5 Ev = i∈I Ev i cover = Function ('cover', Ev, I, BoolSort()) ForAll([e,i1,i2],Implies(And(cover(e,i1),(i1!=i2)), (Not(cover(e,i2))))) 6 Set of messages M M = DeclareSort ('M') 7 A message m ∈ M m = Const ('m',M) 8 For ForAll([e1, e2],Conc(e1, e2) == Not(Or(Conflict(e1, e2),Next(e1, e2),Next(e2, e1))))…”

“…When looking at the integration of several model views or diagrams, Widl et al [6] deal with composing concurrently evolved sequence diagrams in accordance to the overall behaviour given in state machine models. They make direct use of SAT-solvers for the composition.…”

“…As a result, various automated methods for model composition have been introduced [1], [2], [3], [4], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. Most of these methods introduce algorithms to produce a composite model from simpler models obtained from partial specifications.…”

Matching and Merging Scenarios Automatically with Alloy

“…In addition, Widl et al [3] present an approach for composing concurrently evolved sequence diagrams in accordance to the behaviour given in state machine models. They describe the problem of merging sequence diagrams formally using SAT solvers.…”

“…Manual model composition is error-prone, time-consuming and tedious [1]. In recent years, automated model composition has received considerable attention [2,3]. For example [2] make use of Alloy for automated composition.…”