Integrating graph transformations and modal sequence diagrams for specifying structurally dynamic reactive systems

Abstract

Software-intensive systems, for example service robot systems in industry, often consist of multiple reactive components that interact with each other and the environment. Often, the behavior depends on structural properties and relationships among the system and environment components, and reactions of the components in turn may change this structure. Modal Sequence Diagrams (MSDs) are an intuitive and precise formalism for specifying the interaction behavior among reactive components. However, they are not sufficient for specifying structural dynamics. Graph transformation rules (GTRs) provide a powerful approach for specifying structural dynamics. We describe an approach for integrating GTRs with MSDs such that requirements and assumptions on structural changes of system resp. environment objects can be specified. We prototypically implemented this approach by integrating Mod-Graph with ScenarioTools. This allows us not only to specify MSDs and GTRs in Eclipse, but also to simulate the specified behavior via play-out.