Composition of Use Cases Using Synchronization and Model Checking

Abstract

Abstract.Capturing the behavior of a system by use cases have been intensively investigated in the last decade. The challenge is to find both the adequate model that fits the needs of the analyst and a formal composition mechanism which helps the generation of the expected behavior. In this paper, we propose a formal approach for specifying and composing use cases based on assignments. Those assignments are used to express new use cases. An assignment provides the join points and the composition operators that will be taken into account during the composition. These join points are, in fact, determined through a model checking step. They represent states where a property defined by the analyst holds. In order to evaluate these assignments, we define a composition mechanism based on the well known concept of synchronized product.

Merging partial system behaviours: composition of use-case automata

“…The synthesis of the base builder follows rules (7)(8)(9)(10)(11). Rule (7) defines the set of the states of the builder UCA.…”

“…In fact, in order to write the composition expression of the UCA Order_3, we need to have Order_2 constructed because of the specification of the extension points. In order to overcome such constraints, we extended the possibility of defining an LTL property in the composition expression rather than defining a specific extension points as mentioned in [7]. The base UCA is checked against this property in the SPIN model checker that is interfaced in the UMACT tool.…”

“…Moreover, these expressions provide the composition operators that define the semantics of behavioral merging, as well as the extension points where the merging will be performed. In this paper, we extend the work in [7] by presenting a general approach that accepts extension points as states or transitions of the base UCA. In addition, we implement a tool that supports this approach.…”