AGL: Incorporating behavioral aspects into domain-driven design

Generative software module development for domain-driven design with annotation-based domain specific language

UML activity and state chart diagrams are the most frequently UML models used for testing a system based on its specifications. Testers may choose different UML diagrams based on comprehensibility criteria. Previous studies, however, highlighted the lack of experts’ evaluation of comprehensibility of activity and state chart diagrams in test case generation. Thus, the main objective of this study is to evaluate the comprehensibility of the UML activity and state chart diagrams based on perspectives of experts. This study generated manual test cases from activity and state chart diagrams and used comprehensibility’s evaluation criteria during interviews with several software testing experts. The results of this study revealed that activity diagrams are more comprehensible than state chart diagrams in test case generation by considering comprehension variables (perceived difficulty and subjective confidence). The results of this study aim to unify the practical efforts of testers to choose MBT diagrams in generating test cases.

Use cases are commonly used to structure and document requirements while UML state machine diagrams often describe the behavior of a system and serve as a basis to automate test case generation in many model-based testing (MBT) tools. Therefore, automated support for the transition from use cases to state machines would provide significant, practical help for testing system requirements. Additionally, traceability could be established through automated transformations, which could then be used for instance to link requirements to design decisions and test cases, and assess the impact of requirements changes. In this paper, we propose an approach to automatically generate state machine diagrams from use cases while establishing traceability links. Our approach is implemented in a tool, which we used to perform three case studies, including an industrial case study. The results show that high quality state machine diagrams can be generated, which can be manually refined at reasonable cost to support MBT. Automatically generated state machines showed to largely conform to the actual system behavior as evaluated by a domain expert.

Performance evaluation of the upcoming 802.11e QoS-aware enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) in WLANs has drawn extensive attention. The foundations for most of the studies are three major performance models in legacy distributed coordination function (DCF) analysis. In this paper, we first expose the common guiding principle behind these three seemingly different models. Subsequently, we propose a new unified performance model and analysis method to study the saturation throughput and delay performance of EDCA, under the assumption of a finite number of users and ideal channel conditions in a single-hop WLAN. This unified model is easy to understand and apply and helps increase the understanding of the existing performance analysis. In addition to its appealing simplicity, our unified model and analysis are validated well by simulation results. And ultimately, by means of the proposed model, we are able to evaluate the differentiation effects of EDCA parameters on WLAN performance in very broad settings, a feature which is essential for network design.

UML is widely accepted and practiced in industries for modeling and design of software systems. Software requirements and design are very important parts of software development, which must be validated and verified before implementation. UML State Machine diagram is an important formalism to model the dynamics of the system. In this paper, a comparative study of the test case generation techniques from UML State Machine diagram has been done. This study is an attempt to find out the work that has already been done in this field and various aspects of UML state machines that have been considered for generating test cases. Finally, this paper presents a scope to generate test data for complex state machine involving concurrent states and events.

This paper proposes a JUnit test code generation tool from the UML state machine diagram which is referred to here as JuiceGen tool. Genetic algorithm (GA) based approach is used to generate the test data because of its simplicity and effectiveness. The generated test data are sequences of triggers which change the status of the state machine diagram. The GAs can generate sequences of triggers which can cover more than 95% transition coverage. The triggers are mapped as methods called in the test code. Junit test code is generated not only from the sequences of triggers. The mapping information between the state machine diagram and the class under tests are also required. This detail includes: the methods which map to the triggers; the class members which map to the attribute; and the initial value of the attributes of the state machine. The generated JUnit test code has been tested by finding the code coverage of the program under test. The experimental results show that JUnit code generated from JuiceGen can represent all behaviours which the sequence of triggers could cover.

UML activity diagrams are the object-oriented equivalent of flow charts and data-flow diagrams from structured development (Gane and Sarson 1979). In UML 1.x, UML activity diagrams were a specialization of UML state machine diagrams, although in UML 2.x they are full-fledged artifacts. UML activity diagrams are used to explore the logic of ■ a complex operation, ■ a complex business rule, ■ a single use case, ■ several use cases, ■ a business process, ■ concurrent processes, ■ software processes. General Guidelines Place the Starting Point in the Top Left Corner A starting point is modeled with a filled circle, using the same notation that UML state chart diagrams use. Every UML activity diagram should have a starting point, and placing it at the top left corner reflects the way that people in Western cultures begin reading. Figure 41, depicting the business process of enrolling in a university, takes this approach. Another good option is to place it at the top center of the diagram. Include an Ending Point An ending point is modeled with a filled circle with a border around it. Some people's style is to make ending points optional—sometimes an activity is simply a dead end—but if this is the case, then there is no harm in indicating that the only activity edge (formerly known as a transition) is to an ending point. That way, when someone else reads your diagram, they know that you have considered how to exit these activities.

Because of their structural and semantic inter-dependency, UML diagrams describing a software product must be consistent to ensure the success of the development process. This inter-diagram consistency is often not easy to ensure considering the multi-views the diagrams cover, the different levels of abstraction they encode, and the different development phases during which they are produced. In this paper, we tackle the consistency problem between the functional and dynamic views in behavioral diagrams of software. We propose an approach to detect and localize inter-consistency errors among UML use cases and activity diagrams. This approach is composed of two phases: measurement phase (1) and controlling phase (2). This approach is illustrated and validated through a "Restaurant management system" case study. The proposed approach will help both software designers/developers and quality assurance/testing engineers identifying and localizing the causes of software errors at early phases (specification and design).

The Unified Enterprise Modelling Language (UEML) aims to become a hub for integrated use of enterprise and information systems (IS) models expressed using different languages. The paper explains how central constructs from UML's class and activity diagrams have been incorporated into UEML. As a result, the semantics of UML's central constructs for representing classes and activities have become more precisely defined in terms of the common UEML ontology. Through their ontology images, the two diagram types are also on the way to become interoperable with other enterprise and IS modelling languages in UEML.

We present a static verification tool (SVT), a system that performs static verification on UML models composed of UML class and state machine diagrams. Additionally, the SVT allows the user to add extra behavior specification in the form of guards and effects by defining a small action language. UML models are checked against properties written in a special-purpose property language that allows the user to specify linear temporal logic formulas that explicitly reason about UML components. Thus, the SVT provides a strong foundation for the design of reliable systems and a step towards model-driven security.

Dynamic analysis of high-speed train–track–bridge (TTB) system presents engineering challenges, particularly under complex conditions like track irregularity and crosswinds. Achieving a balance between computational efficiency and accuracy using the traditional substructure method, i.e. modeling the train and track–bridge separately and possibly performing iterations between them, can be difficult. In this paper, a practical unified three-dimensional (3D) TTB model is presented by using two coordinate systems: a stationary system for the track–bridge, and a moving system for the high-speed train. A wheel–rail interaction (WRI) element model is further extended such that the wheel and rail nodes in WRI element belong to moving and stationary systems, respectively, so as to make the train and track–bridge models consistently combined into one unified model. The unified modeling method simplifies computations and improves efficiency and stability. The modeling method has been implemented into an open source finite element platform, i.e. OpenSees, and applied for dynamic response analysis of a train traveling at 50[Formula: see text]m/s over a seven-span simply supported bridge. Running safety assessments are performed using three criteria, i.e. the Nadal criterion, Prud’homme criterion and unloading criterion, considering track irregularities and crosswind loads. The analysis results provide practically useful references for engineering.

Rapid deployment of IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) and their increasing quality of service (QoS) requirements motivate extensive performance evaluations of the upcoming 802.11e QoS-aware enhanced distributed coordination function (EDCA). Most of the analytical studies up-to-date have been based on one of the three major performance models in legacy distributed coordination function analysis, requiring a large degree of complexity in solving multidimensional Markov chains. Here, we expose the common guiding principle behind these three seemingly different models. Subsequently, by abstracting, unifying, and extending this common principle, we propose a new unified performance model and analysis method to study the saturation throughput and delay performance of EDCA, under the assumption of a finite number of stations and ideal channel conditions in a single-hop WLAN. This unified model combines the strengths of all three models, and thus, is easy to understand and apply; on the other hand, it helps increase the understanding of the existing performance analysis. Despite its appealing simplicity, our unified model and analysis are validated very well by simulation results. Ultimately, by means of the proposed model, we are able to precisely evaluate the differentiation effects of EDCA parameters on WLAN performance in very broad settings, a feature which is essential for network design.

The paper presents the methodology of the logic controller development process based on the UML state machine diagram. The development process covers the logic synthesis and the implementation by means of the intermediate model based on Petri net formalism. The transformation between these two formal models is performed at the metamodels level according to the Model Driven Architecture (MDA). Semantics of the hierarchical configurable Petri net (HCfgPN) was adopted for the preemption and resumption mechanism. Operational subnet of HCfgPN model may be verified using formal methods.

Abstract. In recent years, 3D virtual indoor/outdoor urban modelling becomes a key spatial information framework for many civil and engineering applications such as evacuation planning, emergency and facility management. For accomplishing such sophisticate decision tasks, there is a large demands for building multi-scale and multi-sourced 3D urban models. Currently, Building Information Model (BIM) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are broadly used as the modelling sources. However, data sharing and exchanging information between two modelling domains is still a huge challenge; while the syntactic or semantic approaches do not fully provide exchanging of rich semantic and geometric information of BIM into GIS or vice-versa. This paper proposes a novel approach for integrating BIM and GIS using semantic web technologies and Resources Description Framework (RDF) graphs. The novelty of the proposed solution comes from the benefits of integrating BIM and GIS technologies into one unified model, so-called Integrated Geospatial Information Model (IGIM). The proposed approach consists of three main modules: BIM-RDF and GIS-RDF graphs construction, integrating of two RDF graphs, and query of information through IGIM-RDF graph using SPARQL. The IGIM generates queries from both the BIM and GIS RDF graphs resulting a semantically integrated model with entities representing both BIM classes and GIS feature objects with respect to the target-client application. The linkage between BIM-RDF and GIS-RDF is achieved through SPARQL endpoints and defined by a query using set of datasets and entity classes with complementary properties, relationships and geometries. To validate the proposed approach and its performance, a case study was also tested using IGIM system design.

Microservice APIs are often identified and designed based on Domain-Driven Design (DDD). To help in the continuous analysis of mappings of domain model elements to APIs and API endpoints, we aim to automate the assessment of conformance to Architectural Design Decision (ADD) options. The ADDs, their decision options, and relevant decision drivers studied in this paper originate from an empirical study on the mapping of domain model elements to APIs and API endpoints in practice. We propose automated detectors to detect the decision options of the ADDs taken in a given microservice API model, and an assessment scoring scheme based on the empirical knowledge codified in the ADDs. We evaluate our work, by first manually creating a ground truth for 14 cases in a multi-case study, and then comparing the results of our automated detectors to the ground truth for each of the 14 cases. In the cases we were able to identify 86% of the decision points correctly, and a statistical analysis of our data shows only a negligible effect size for differences to the ground truth.