Authors:
Asghar Bokhari
and
Skip Poehlman
Affiliation:
McMaster University, Canada
Keyword(s):
Dynamic analysis, Petri nets, UML state diagrams, Agents, EPSS.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Modeling Formalisms, Languages and Notations
;
Modeling of Distributed Systems
Abstract:
Enterprise information systems are complex software that are frequently required to adapt to rapid changes in business environments. Although there have been some successes, the research literature is full of horror stories due to failure of these systems. Current software engineering practice requires verification/validation of complex systems at the design stage. Unified Modeling Language (UML), which lacks formal semantics, is the defacto standard for designing the majority of information systems and that means dynamic analysis techniques cannot be used for validation of UML models. Consequently there has been a considerable interest among researchers in formalization of UML models. Early proposals translate UML state diagrams into some kind of mathematical language and input this textual description to a model checker. In this paper we present a rule-based technique to convert UML state diagrams to Object Coloured Petri (OCP) nets. A strong mathematical foundation, more amenable
to verification and validation procedures, along with a graphical representation, makes Petri nets ideally suitable for dynamic analysis of UML modelled information systems.
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