Formalization of the design phase of software lifecycle: a grammar based approach

In Object Oriented systems, the design phase can be modeled using the three diagrams: Sequence diagram (which depicts responses of all objects that are involved in a single use case), Class Diagram (which is used to depict the structural aspect of design) and State chart diagram (which is used to depicts the states and state dependent behavior for objects). In this paper, we have proposed a framework for verification of these diagrams, which includes syntactic correctness and inter-diagram consistency. This is done by proposing Context Free Grammar for the three diagrams. The proposed grammar is validated by using Lex and Yacc and parse tree is generated which is an alternate form of the grammar. This framework, being built based on a formal approach, would enable us to automate the process of correctness and consistency verification among the diagrams used in design phase. This would also help us in ensuring requirement traceability on the long run.