Activity Graphs and Processes

The widespread adoption of graphical notations for software design has created a demand for formally-based methods to support and extend their use. A principal focus for this demand is the Unified Modeling Language (UML), and, within UML, the diagrammatic notations for describing dynamic properties. This paper shows how one such notation, that of Activity Graphs, can be given a process semantics in the language of Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP). Such a semantics can be used to demonstrate the consistency of an object model and to provide a link to other methods and tools. A small example is included.

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