A Formal Metamodeling Approach to a Transformation between the UML State Machine and Object-Z
ICFEM '02 Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Formal Engineering Methods: Formal Methods and Software Engineering
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Formal modeling notations and visual modelingnotations can complement each other when developingsoftware models. The most frequently adopted approachis to define transformations between the visual and formalmodels. However, a significant problem with thecurrently suggested approaches is that the transformationitself is often described imprecisely, with the result thatthe overall transformation task may be imprecise,incomplete and inconsistent. This paper presents ametamodel-based transformation between UML andObject-Z. In the paper, the two languages are defined interms of their metamodels, and a systematictransformation between the models is provided at themeta-level. As a consequence, we can provide a precise,consistent and complete transformation between a visualmodel in UML and a formal model in Object-Z. In a casestudy, we illustrate how the metamodel-basedtransformation enables us to create a UML visualrepresentation of an Object-Z specification.