Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Synthesizing State-Based Object Systems from LSC Specifications

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Implementation and Application of Automata (CIAA 2000)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2088))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Live sequence charts (LSCs) have been defined recently as an extension of message sequence charts (MSCs; or their UML variant, sequence diagrams) for rich inter-object specification. One of the main additions is the notion of universal charts and hot, mandatory behavior, which, among other things, enables one to specify forbidden scenarios. LSCs are thus essentially as expressive as statecharts. This paper deals with synthesis, which is the problem of deciding, given an LSC specification, if there exists a satisfying object system and, if so, to synthesize one automatically. The synthesis problem is crucial in the development of complex systems, since sequence diagrams serve as the manifestation of use cases — whether used formally or informally — and if synthesizable they could lead directly to implementation. Synthesis is considerably harder for LSCs than for MSCs, and we tackle it by defining consistency, showing that an entire LSC specification is consistent iff it is satisfiable by a state-based object system, and then synthesizing a satisfying system as a collection of finite state machines or statecharts.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Amon, T., G. Boriello and C. Sequin, “Operation/Event Graphs: A design representation for timing behavior”, Proc.’ 91 Conf. on Computer Hardware Description Language, pp. 241–260, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Abadi, M., L. Lamport and P. Wolper, “Realizable and unrealizable concurrent program specifications”, Proc. 16th Int. Colloq. on Automata, Languages and Programming, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 372, Springer-Verlag, pp. 1–17, 1989.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Alur, R., and M. Yannakakis, “Model Checking of Message Sequence Charts”, to appear in Proc. 10th Int. Conf. on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR’99), Eindhoven, Netherlands, August 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Alur, R., K. Etessami and M. Yannakakis, “Inference of Message Sequence Charts”, Proc. 22nd Int. Conf. on Software Engineering (ICSE’00), Limerick, Ireland, June 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Boriello, G., “A new interface specification methodology and its application to transducer synthesis”, Technical Report UCB/CSD 88/430, University of California Berkeley, 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Biermann, A.W., and R. Krishnaswamy, “Constructing Programs from Example Computations”, IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng., SE-2 (1976), 141–153.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  7. Broy, M., and I. Krüger, “Interaction Interfaces — Towards a Scientific Foundation of a Methodological Usage of Message Sequence Charts”, In Formal Engineering Methods, (J. Staples, M.G. Hinchey, and Shaoying Liu, eds), IEEE Computer Society, 1998, pp. 2–15.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Damm, W., and D. Harel, “LSCs: Breathing Life into Message Sequence Charts”, Proc. 3rd IFIP Int. Conf. on Formal Methods for Open Object-based Distributed Systems, (P. Ciancarini, A. Fantechi and R. Gorrieri, eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 293–312, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Emerson, E.A., “Temporal and modal logic”, Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, (1990), 997–1072.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Emerson, E.A., and E.M. Clarke, “Using branching time temporal logic to synthesize synchronization skeletons”, Sci. Comp. Prog. 2 (1982), 241–266.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Harel, D., “Statecharts: A Visual Formalism for Complex Systems”, Sci. Comput. Prog. 8 (1987), 231–274. (Preliminary version: Tech. Report CS84-05, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, February 1984.)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  12. Harel, D., “From Play-In Scenarios To Code: An Achievable Dream”, Proc. Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering (FASE), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1783 (Tom Maibaum, ed.), Springer-Verlag, March 2000, pp. 22–34.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Harel, D., and E. Gery, “Executable Object Modeling with Statecharts”, IEEE Computer, (1997), 31–42.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Harel, D., and H. Kugler, “Synthesizing State-Based Object Systems from LSC Specifications”, 1999, Available as Technical Report MCS99-20, TheWeizmann Institute of Science, Department of Computer Science, Rehovot, Israel, http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/reports.html.

  15. Harel, D., and O. Kupferman, “On the Inheritance of State-Based Object Behavior”, Proc. 34th Int. Conf. on Component and Object Technology, IEEE Computer Society, Santa Barbara, CA, August 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Jacobson, I., Object-Oriented Software Engineering: A Use Case Driven Approach. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1992.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. Krüger, I., R. Grosu, P. Scholz and M. Broy “From MSCs to Statecharts”, Proc. DIPES’98, Kluwer, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Koskimies, K., and E. Makinen, “Automatic Synthesis of State Machines from Trace Diagrams”, Software — Practice and Experience 24:7 (1994), 643–658.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Koskimies, K., T. Systa, J. Tuomi and T. Mannisto, “Automated Support for Modeling OO Software”, IEEE Software 15:1 (1998), 87–94.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Kupferman, O., and M.Y. Vardi, “Synthesis with incomplete information”, Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. on Temporal Logic (ICTL97), pp. 91–106, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Klose, J., and H. Wittke, “Automata Representation of Live Sequence Charts”, manuscript, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Leue, S., L. Mehrmann and M. Rezai, “Synthesizing ROOM Models from Message Sequence Chart Specifications”, University of Waterloo Tech. Report 98-06, April 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Manna, Z., and R.J. Waldinger, “A deductive approach to program synthesis” ACM Trans. Prog. Lang. Sys. 2 (1980), 90–121.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  24. Pnueli, A., and R. Rosner, “On the Synthesis of a Reactive Module”, Proc. 16th ACM Symp. on Principles of Programming Languages, Austin,TX, January 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Pnueli, A., R. Rosner, “On the Synthesis of an Asynchronous Reactive Module”, Proc. 16th Int. Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 372, Springer-Verlag, pp. 652–671, 1989.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Pnueli, A., R. Rosner, “Distributed Reactive Systems are Hard to Synthesize”, Proc. 31st IEEE Symp. on Foundations of Computer Science, pp. 746–757, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Schlor, R. and W. Damm, “Specification and verification of system-level hardware designs using timing diagrams”, Proc. European Conference on Design Automation, Paris, France, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 518–524, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Selic, B., G. Gullekson and P. Ward, Real-Time Object-Oriented Modeling, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1994.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  29. Documentation of the Unified Modeling Language (UML), available from the Object Management Group (OMG), http://www.omg.org.

  30. Wong-Toi, H., and D.L. Dill, “Synthesizing processes and schedulers from temporal specifications”, In Computer-Aided Verification’ 90 (Clark and Kurshan, eds.), DIMACS Series in Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, volume 3, pp. 177–186, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Whittle, J. and J. Schumann, “Generating Statechart Designs from Scenarios”, Proc. 22nd Int. Conf. on Software Engineering (ICSE’00), Limerick, Ireland, June 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Z.120 ITU-T Recommendation Z.120: Message Sequence Chart (MSC), ITU-T, Geneva, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    David Harel & Hillel Kugler

Authors
  1. David Harel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hillel Kugler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Middlesex College, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada, N6A 5B7

    Shen Yu  & Andrei Păun  & 

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Harel, D., Kugler, H. (2001). Synthesizing State-Based Object Systems from LSC Specifications. In: Yu, S., Păun, A. (eds) Implementation and Application of Automata. CIAA 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2088. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44674-5_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44674-5_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42491-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44674-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation