Publication -
 Bernhard Rumpe
The UML as a Formal Modeling Notation

The Unified Modeling Language - Workshop UML'98: Beyond the Notation



Author(s): Andy Evans, Robert France, Kevin Lano, Bernhard Rumpe
Year: 1999
Publisher: Springer Verlag Berlin, LNCS
Editor: Jean Bezivin, Pierre-Alain Muller
Abstract:The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is rapidly emerging as a de-facto standard for modelling OO systems. Given this role, it is imperative that the UML needs a well-defined, fully explored semantics. Such semantics is required in order to ensure that UML concepts are precisely stated and defined. In this paper we motivate an approach to formalizing UML in which formal specification techniques are used to gain insight into the semantics of UML notations and diagrams and describe a roadmap for this approach. The authors initiated the Precise UML (PUML) group in order to develop a precise semantic model for UML diagrams. The semantic model is to be used as the basis for a set of diagrammatical transformation rules, which enable formal deductions to be made about UML diagrams. A small example shows how these rules can be used to verify whether one class diagram is a valid deduction of another. Because these rules are presented at the diagrammatical level, it will be argued that UML can be successfully used as a formal modelling tool without the notational complexities that are commonly found in textual specification techniques.


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BibTeX-Entry:
@inproceedings{EFLR98d, author = {Andy Evans and Robert France and Kevin Lano and Bernhard Rumpe}, title = {The UML as a Formal Modeling Notation}, booktitle = {The Unified Modeling Language - Workshop UML'98: Beyond the Notation}, year = {1999}, publisher = {Springer Verlag Berlin, LNCS}, editor = {Jean Bezivin and Pierre-Alain Muller} }

Bernhard Rumpe