Matching and Merging Scenarios Automatically with Alloy

Abstract

Abstract. The design of large systems often involves the creation of models that describe partial specifications. Model composition is the process of combining partial models to create a single coherent model. This paper presents an automatic composition technique for creating a sequence diagram from partial specifications captured in multiple sequence diagrams with the help of Alloy. Our contribution is twofold: a novel true-concurrent semantics for sequence diagram composition, and a model-driven transformation of sequence diagrams to Alloy that preserves the semantics of composition defined. We have created a tool SD2Alloy that implements the technique as follows: two given sequence diagrams are transformed into two Alloy models, and merged according to a set of syntactic logical constraints describing how their elements should be matched. These constraints are in accordance to our compositional semantics. The technique can also be used to detect problems and inconsistencies in the composition of diagrams.

Weaving True-Concurrent Aspects Using Constraint Solvers

“…In recent work [9], [10], we have presented a method for sequence diagram composition based on Alloy. The approach taken does not directly involve an algorithm to compose sequence diagrams, but rather uses Alloy to produce all possible solutions for the composition, where each solution is a possible trace of execution in the composed model.…”

“…The approach does not, however, explicitly incorporate the semantics of scenarios in the transformation itself. Further, whereas in [9] composition is treated as a simple conjunction of models through syntactic matching of elements of both models, in [10] we allow the matching glue to consist of additional behavioural constraints (for instance imposing an order, disallowing event occurrences, etc). Our approach in this paper is more generic, and covers a more complex form of composition through aspect weaving.…”

“…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.…”

“…Most of these methods introduce algorithms to produce a composite model from simpler models obtained from partial specifications. In recent work [9], [10], we presented a fully automated approach for the composition of sequence diagrams making use of the constraint solver Alloy [11]. Moreover, a well known problem of how poor tool performance impacts on their applicability for large and complex models is discussed for instance in [12], [13].…”

Mind the Gap: Addressing Behavioural Inconsistencies with Formal Methods

“…As a result, in recent years, various methods for automated model composition have been introduced [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15]. Most of these methods involve introducing algorithms to produce a composite model from simpler models originating from partial specifications and assume a formal underlying semantics [7].…”