A UML Profile for Executable and Incremental Specification-Level Modeling

Model executability is widely considered an important enabling factor for model driven development. However, executability of Unified Modeling Language (UML) models tends to imply quite a low level of abstraction, which causes executable models to resemble diagrammatically structured program code. In this article, a UML profile that enables executable specification-level modeling using an incremental approach is proposed. The profile employs the Object Constraint Language (OCL) with multi-object joint actions to declaratively specify behavior on a higher level of abstraction than sequences of messages between objects. A nondeterministic mode of execution removes the need for explicit control flow, greatly simplifying the models. A variant of superposition is used to construct specification models incrementally, utilizing aspect-oriented layers, and preserving safety properties. The proposed mechanism also aims at bridging the gap between use cases and design level specifications. As the profile is based on ideas taken from the DisCo modeling language, originally designed for formal specification of reactive systems, there is a straight-forward mapping that enables use of existing DisCo tools for animation, verification and synthesis. A running example is presented to illustrate the use of the proposed approach.

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