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Extending interaction overview diagrams with activity diagram constructs

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Abstract

UML2.0 introduced interaction overview diagrams (IODs) as a way of specifying relationships between UML interactions. IODs are a variant of activity diagrams that show control flow between a set of interactions. The nodes in an IOD are either inline interactions or references to an interaction. A number of recent papers have defined a formal semantics for IODs. These are restricted, however, to interactions that can be specified using basic sequence diagrams. This excludes the many rich modeling constructs available in activity diagrams such as interruptible regions, activity groups, concurrent node executions, and flow final nodes. It is non-trivial to allow such constructs in IODs because their meaning has to be interpreted in the context of interaction sequences rather than activities. In this paper, we consider how some of these activity diagram constructs can be used practically in IODs. We motivate the integration of these constructs into IODs using a NASA air traffic control subsystem and define a formal semantics for these constructs that builds on an existing semantics definition for IODs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing, Lancaster University, Bailrigg Lancaster, LA14YW, UK

    Jon Whittle

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  1. Jon Whittle
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Correspondence to Jon Whittle.

Additional information

Communicated by Dr. Oystein Haugen.

This paper is an extended version of [25] where the extensions and their semantics were first introduced. However, the treatment there was abbreviated. This paper gives a full treatment of the formal semantics as well as a full case study.

This work was conducted whilst the author “J. Whittle” was with George Mason University.

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Whittle, J. Extending interaction overview diagrams with activity diagram constructs. Softw Syst Model 9, 203–224 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-009-0114-7

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