An approach to detection of UML-based ownership violation

Abstract

In this paper, we study how to detect the ownership violation based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML 2.0) in IBM Eclipse Modeling Framework. We develop a novel technique for automatically detecting the ownership violation in a program against its design class diagram using a software model checker. Specifically, given the fields that are intended to implement ownership in a UML class diagram, our approach checks the ownership property in two steps. First, the approach systematically generates all valid object diagrams, i.e. valid input program states. Then, after a method to destroy the owner object is called on each object diagram, the approach checks whether all external links to the owned objects have been removed. Central to this approach is how to prune away the large search space that includes all valid input program states.