Code generation for UML 2 activity diagrams: Towards a comprehensive model-driven development approach

Abstract

Modeling static structure and modeling behavior are often regarded as two distinct topics, however, in UML they are not. They are even tightly coupled as can be seen e.g. by looking at attributes: That an attribute holds values at runtime is defined within the Classes language unit whereas the act of setting or getting a concrete value of an attribute is defined in the Actions language unit. Tool support for modeling static structure is far more advanced than for modeling behavior. In particular, further model processing for activities like transformations or code generation is in a rudimentary stage. In this paper, we present an approach for code generation for activities preceded by model transformations. Besides advancing model-driven development to properly include behavior, our contribution also enhances structural modeling by providing generation of code for accessing structural features based on the UML semantics of Actions. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.