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Assert and negate revisited: Modal semantics for UML sequence diagrams

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Abstract

Live Sequence Charts (LSC) extend Message Sequence Charts (MSC), mainly by distinguishing possible from necessary behavior. They thus enable the specification of rich multi-modal scenario-based properties, such as mandatory, possible and forbidden scenarios. The sequence diagrams of UML 2.0 enrich those of previous versions of UML by two new operators, assert and negate, for specifying required and forbidden behaviors, which appear to have been inspired by LSC. The UML 2.0 semantics of sequence diagrams, however, being based on pairs of valid and invalid sets of traces, is inadequate, and prevents the new operators from being used effectively.

We propose an extension of, and a different semantics for this UML language—Modal Sequence Diagrams (MSD)—based on the universal/existential modal semantics of LSC. In particular, in MSD assert and negate are really modalities, not operators. We define MSD as a UML 2.0 profile, thus paving the way to apply formal verification, synthesis, and scenario-based execution techniques from LSC to the mainstream UML standard.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    David Harel & Shahar Maoz

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  1. David Harel
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  2. Shahar Maoz
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Correspondence to David Harel.

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Communicated by Dr. Oystein Haugen.

Preliminary version appeared in SCESM '06: Proc. of the 2006 Int. workshop on Scenarios and State Machines, Shanghai, China (May 2006) [15]. This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant No.287/02-1), and by The John von Neumann Minerva Center for the Development of Reactive Systems at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

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Harel, D., Maoz, S. Assert and negate revisited: Modal semantics for UML sequence diagrams. Softw Syst Model 7, 237–252 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-007-0054-z

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