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A Formal Descriptive Semantics of UML

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Formal Methods and Software Engineering (ICFEM 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 5256))

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Abstract

This paper proposes a novel approach to the formal definition of UML semantics. We distinguish descriptive semantics from functional semantics of modelling languages. The former defines which system is an instance of a model while the later defines the basic concepts underlying the models. In this paper, the descriptive semantics of class diagram, interaction diagram and state machine diagram are defined by first order logic formulas. A translation tool is implemented and integrated with the theorem prover SPASS to enable automated reasoning about models. The formalisation and reasoning of models is then applied to model consistency checking.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept of Computer Science, National Univ. of Defence Tech, Changsha, 410073, China

    Lijun Shan

  2. Department of Computing, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, OX33 1HX, UK

    Hong Zhu

Authors
  1. Lijun Shan
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  2. Hong Zhu
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Hosei University, 3-7-2 Kajino-cho Koganei-shi, 184-8584, Tokoy, Japan

    Shaoying Liu

  2. Department of Computing and Software, McMaster University, 1280 Main St West, L8S 4K1, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Tom Maibaum

  3. Department of Computer Science and Communication Engineering, , Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, 6-10-1-Hakozaki, 812-8581, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, Japan

    Keijiro Araki

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Shan, L., Zhu, H. (2008). A Formal Descriptive Semantics of UML. In: Liu, S., Maibaum, T., Araki, K. (eds) Formal Methods and Software Engineering. ICFEM 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5256. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88194-0_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88194-0_23

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-88193-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-88194-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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