From UML to alloy and back again

  • Authors:
  • Seyyed M. A. Shah;Kyriakos Anastasakis;Behzad Bordbar

  • Affiliations:
  • School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, United Kingdom;School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, United Kingdom;School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, United Kingdom

  • Venue:
  • MODELS'09 Proceedings of the 2009 international conference on Models in Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Model transformations can be used to bridge the gap between design and analysis technical spaces by creating tools that allow a model produced by a designer to be transformed to a model suitable for conducting automated analysis. Such model transformations aim at allowing the designer to benefit from the capabilities provided by analysis tools and languages. If the designer who is not a formal method expert is to benefit from such tools, the outcome of the analysis should also be transformed to the language used in the design domain. This paper presents a study involving UML2Alloy, a tool for transforming UML models in form of UML Class Diagrams which are augmented with OCL constraints, to Alloy. The conversion allows analysis of UML models via Alloy, to identify consistencies in those UML models. We present a method of automatically creating a model transformation based on the original UML2Alloy transformation. The new transformation converts Alloy instances into the UML equivalent Object Diagram. The current technique is presented with the help of an example, along with a prototype implementation using the QVT standard.