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The many meanings of UML 2 Sequence Diagrams: a survey

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Abstract

Scenario languages are widely used in software development. Typical usage scenarios, forbidden behaviors, test cases, and many more aspects can be depicted with graphical scenarios. Scenario languages were introduced into the Unified Modeling Language (UML) under the name of Sequence Diagrams. The 2.0 version of UML changed Sequence Diagrams significantly and the expressiveness of the language was highly increased. However, the complexity of the language (and the diversity of the goals Sequence Diagrams are used for) yields several possible choices in its semantics. This paper collects and categorizes the semantic choices in the language, surveys the formal semantics proposed for Sequence Diagrams, and presents how these approaches handle the various semantic choices.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Muegyetem rkp. 3, Budapest, 1111, Hungary

    Zoltán Micskei

  2. CNRS; LAAS, 7 avenue du Colonel Roche, 31077, Toulouse, France

    Hélène Waeselynck

  3. Université de Toulouse; UPS, INSA, INP, ISAE; LAAS, 31077, Toulouse, France

    Hélène Waeselynck

Authors
  1. Zoltán Micskei
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  2. Hélène Waeselynck
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Correspondence to Hélène Waeselynck.

Additional information

Communicated by Dr. Oystein Haugen.

This work was partially supported by the ReSIST Network of Excellence (IST 026764) funded by the European Union under the Information Society Sixth Framework Programme.

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Micskei, Z., Waeselynck, H. The many meanings of UML 2 Sequence Diagrams: a survey. Softw Syst Model 10, 489–514 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-010-0157-9

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