UML models engineering from static and dynamic aspects of formal specifications

Abstract

While formal methods are focused on some particular parts of software systems, especially secure ones, graphical techniques are the most useful techniques to specify in a comprehensible way large and complex systems. In this paper we deal with the B method which is a formal method used to model systems and prove their correctness by successive refinements. Our goal is to produce graphical UML views from existing formal B specifications in order to ease their readability and then help their external validation. In fact, such views can be useful for various stakeholders in a formal development process: they are intended to support the understanding of the formal specifications by the requirements holders and the certification authorities; they can also be used by the B developers to get an alternate view on their work. In this paper, we propose an MDE framework to support the derivation of UML class and state/transition diagrams from B specifications. Our transformation process is based on a reverse-engineering technique guided by a set of structural and semantic mappings specified on a meta-level. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.