Towards a formal account of a foundational subset for executable UML models

Abstract

A current Request for Proposal [1] from the OMG describes the requirements for an "Executable UML Foundation". This subset of UML 2 would serve as a shared foundation for higher-level modeling concepts, such as activities, state machines, and interactions. In a sense, this subset would define a basic virtual machine for UML, allowing the execution and analysis of runtime behavior of models. Regardless of the executable subset chosen, a precise definition of execution semantics of UML actions is required. To the best of our knowledge, no formal semantics of such a subset yet exists. We present our work on clarifying the semantics and pragmatics of UML actions. In particular, we sketch a formalization of a subset of UML actions and discuss common usage scenarios for the most complex actions, identifying usage assumptions that are not explicit in the UML 2 specification. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.