On Succinctness of Hierarchical State Diagrams in Absence of Message Passing

Abstract

We show a subexponential but superpolynomial lower bound for flattening problem for statecharts. The result explains why common flattening algorithms explode, if the signal communication is excluded from the target language. This specifically affects flattening-based strategies for automatic model-based program synthesis.

State machine flattening, a mapping study and tools assessment

“…In all those cases, the limitations of the transformation are presented in the publication (Q.1.5: 67%). The only flattening techniques which takes history pseudo-state into account is the one presented by Wasowski et al [43,44]. Finally, the transformation proposed by David and Möller [15] uses Hierarchical Timed Automata as input.…”

“…Among these two publications, only [45] evaluated the effects of flattening on test case generation in practice. Finally, one paper [44] considers a formal framework to discuss flattening algorithms complexity.…”

“…Model checking uses are related to consistency management [18,38,41,46] or IP telephony [10]. Model checking exploits the fact that flattening is also a way to provide a formal semantics to hierarchical state machines [3,21,31,44]. Three of these publications focus on UML state machines to make them analyzable.…”

“…If they cannot agree on a given paper, a third reviewer solved the conflict. In our case, this happened for two papers: [34,44]. Next, the classification scheme is built by clustering the keywords into different categories.…”