From UML to SIMULINK CAAM: Formal Specification and Transformation Analysis

Abstract

UML and Simulink are attractive languages for embedded systems design and modeling. An automatic mapping from UML models to Simulink would be an interesting resource in a seamless design flow, allowing designers to use UML as modeling language for the whole system and at same time to use facilities for code generation based on Simulink. In a previous work, a UML to Simulink translation was prototyped using a Java implementation. In this paper, we present the formal definition of this translation using graph grammars, as well as its automation, which is supported by the AGG system. With the formalization of the metamodels and translation rules, we can guarantee the correctness of the translation.

From UML diagrams to simulink models

“…The graph grammar proposed here was redefined (from [10]) to support nested method calls. The initial state of the grammar is given by a typed attributed graph representing an UML specification (according subsection 3.1).…”

“…The extension of the approach for nested method calls did not modify this step from the original version [10]. Multiple levels of hierarchy were already provided for modeling threads within processors or functions within threads.…”

“…The translation was first prototyped using a Java implementation [6], but without any considerations about its correctness, nor any formalization of metamodels or translation rules. In order to improve the translation, a formalization was proposed for such mapping using graph grammars [3,10].…”

“…Despite these restrictions, it is already possible to apply this approach to various embedded systems: starting with a specification in terms of UML diagrams, Simulink models are automatically obtained [3,10,5]. However, some of that restrictions have prevented the use of the transformation in many cases.…”