Towards a formalization of the Unified Modeling Language

Abstract

The Uni ed Modeling Language UML is a language for specifying, visualizing and documenting object-oriented systems. UML combines the concepts of OOA/OOD, OMT and OOSE and is intended as a standard in the domain of object-oriented analysis and design. Due to the missing formal, mathematical foundation of UML the syntax and the semantics of a number of UML constructs are not precisely de ned. This paper outlines a proposal for the formal foundation of UML that is based on a mathematical system model.? This paper partly originates from a cooperation of the DFG project Bellevue and the

Using the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) as a Foundation for General Conceptual Modeling Languages

“…The association class construct in UML exemplifies a case of non-lucidity, since "an associaton class can have as instances either (a) a n-tuple of entities which classifiers are endpoints of the association; (b) a n+1-tuple containing the entities which classifiers are endpoints of the association plus an instance of the objectified association itself" [13]. This is to say that an association class can be interpreted both as a relation and what is termed in the literature a factual universal [1].…”

An ASM Semantics of UML Derived from the Meta-model and Incorporating Actions

“…The main thread manages the incoming events, ensures the dispatch of the events in the input queue and, depending on the nature of the dispatched events, relay them to the state machine or starts new operation executions, on stand-alone threads. If the active object has a state machine, then at least one of the threads owned by the object corresponds to the state machine execution 1 . A call directed towards an active object results in the creation of a new execution thread.…”

“…The first attempts of formalizing UML date back in 1997 [1], when authors argued the need for a UML formal foundation based on a mathematical system model. This work is followed by more elaborated formalization efforts.…”

Confluent Drawings: Visualizing Non-planar Diagrams in a Planar Way

“…That is, such visualizations are done by drawing graphs in a standard way, so as to assign vertices to points (or simple shapes) and to assign edges to simple paths connecting pairs of vertices (e.g., see [15,17,28]). Examples of such software visualizations include data flow diagrams [2], object-oriented class hierarchies [5,37], object-interaction diagrams [4], method-call graphs [22,24,41], as well as the classic application of flowcharts [29] (see also [1,34,36,39]). Moreover, these examples include both directed and undirected diagrams.…”