A Case Study in Formalizing UML Software Models of Safety Critical Systems

DOI: 10.5176/978-981-08-7466-7_se-48

Authors: Sophine Clachar and Emanuel S. Grant

Abstract:

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the ISO Standard for designing graphical models of software systems in both industry and academia. It promotes some of the best software development practices; however, a feature of the UML is its imprecise semantics, which has a disadvantage of producing ambiguous models. In safety critical systems, ambiguity could result in the loss of property or be detrimental to life. With the continuous use of UML in the software industry, there is a need to augment the informality of software models produced. The objective of this research is to use formal specification to enhance the imprecise semantics of UML and analyze its significance to safety critical systems. The outcome of this activity is a systematic process to transform ambiguous UML class diagrams to a formal representation for verification and validation.

Keywords: Model transformation; formal specificationtechnique; safety critical system