UCMExporter

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UCMExporter

• Enabling UCM-based transformations

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Summary

• Background Information
• The benefit of having UCMExporter
• The problems and challenges
• How UCMExporter works
• Detailed features of the transformation process
  (customization, connectors for causality, naming
  the connectors, parallel synthesizing)
• A demonstration

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Motivation

• Enabling the transformation of UCM requirements
  scenarios to design and testing scenario
  notations.
• Tool Support

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Previous Work

• UCMNav
• MSC direct (Andrew Miga, 2001)
• Scenario in XML (Xiangyang He, 2002)
• MSC via XML (S. Cui, D.Y. Cho, 2002-2003)
• TTCN (Bryan Mulvihill, 2003)

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Benefits of Using UCMExporter

• Can use UCMNav for the requirements phase.
• UCM communicate better the Use Cases to clients
  and engineers
• Generate MSC and SD to do the design
• Test
• Automatic
• Customizable

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Technologies and Tools

• Java (Eclipse) Implementation
• XML with JDOM XML parsing and building
• XSLT with XSLTC transforming XML documents
• UCMNav 2 creating Use Case Maps
• Rational Rose Viewing Sequence Diagrams
• Unisys XMI Add-on importing/exporting XMI
  documents for Rational Rose
• Tau 4.4 viewing MSCs
• Xselerator creating and testing the XSL
  transformations

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UCMExporter Black Box View
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Problems and Challenges

• A need for a detailed mapping between UCM
  concepts and MSC and SD.
• XMI does not define the diagram layout.
• No tool does an auto-layout of the XMI file.
• No tool provides documentation on how it does its
  layout.
• Allowing for customization (e.g. protocols).
• Centralizing the logic for future changes.

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A Sample UCMNavXML

• Refers to XML file generated with UCMNav.
• Describes one or more scenarios.
• A scenario is a path in the UCM

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UCM2TTCN

• Input a UCMNavXML file
• Output test cases (.ttcn and .mlf)
• XSL sheet written by Bryan Mulvihill.

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UCM2MSC Previous Work

• There was a previous work to generate MSC from
  UCMNavXML using XSL only.
• The mapping between UCM and MSC was defined.
• However, the XSL sheet was complicated.
• Work done by S. Cui

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UCM2XMI First Approach

• Input UCMNavXML
• A Java class that will parse the input and
  generate the output.
• First Step Generating pure XMI
• Second Step Adding tool specific diagram
  information. (learning by example)

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Expressing Parallelism with SD

• Comments, colors, labels?
• Comments need to be placed in specific locations
  (near the beginning and end).
• Rose discards the location information.
• Colors are discarded too.
• Labels are used (p1.s1, p1.s1.p1.s1)

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Parallelism Example for SD
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The Need for an Intermediate Step

• Both UCM2MSC and UCM2XMI became very complicated,
  and had many things in common.
• Putting things in common to (current and future)
  transformations in one place (e.g. finding
  instances) will improve code quality.
• Defect fixing, code maintenance evolution will
  become much easier.
• Steps after the intermediate step should become
  straight forward (since all info should be ready)

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XMLInputTransform

• Package for the intermediate step. Hides
  complexity.
• Responsible for preparing the information needed
  for the transformations (e.g. instances,
  messages)

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UCMExporterXML Sample 1
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Advantages of Intermediate Step

• UCM2MSC became a fairly simple XSL sheet (as XSL
  is supposed to be used)
• Same thing for the first step of UCM2XMI
• The second step of UCM2XMI was not effected.
• All future improvements will only effect the
  intermediate step

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XMLInputTransform A Detailed Look

• Makes instances and components readily available.
• Connectors preserve causality.
• Preserving causality with parallelism has
  separate rules.
• All logic is localized better maintenance.

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UCMExporterXMLInputTransformer

• Triggers the transformation (intermediate) step.
• Asks MessageSynthesizer to identify the messages
  and connectors.
• Asks ParallelConnectorMessagesSynthesizer to find
  connectors related to parallel behavior.

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MessageSynthesizer

• Defines the mapping between UCM and messages and
  connectors.
• Mapping is general to cover both MSC and SD.
  (e.g. is-task, timer-property)
• Changes in the mapping only effect this class.

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ParallelConnectorMessagesSynthesizer

• Preserves causality in parallel behavior.
• A more elaborate parsing of the UCMNavXML
  compared to MessageSynthesizer.
• Needs to know what is before, inside, and after a
  parallel block.
• Uses XSL to gather that information.
• Uses Java to insert new connectors

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Parallel Connector Rules E1
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Parallel Connector Rules E2
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Parallel Connector Rules E3
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Parallel Connector Rules E4
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UCMExporterXML Sample 2

• Messages keep enough information for the
  transformations to make decisions.
• Something that is used only by one transformation
  can be invisible to others. (thanks to XSL).

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More Features in Intermediate Step

• Architecture allows for improving intermediate
  step. Invisible to transformations.
• By improving the intermediate step we improve the
  transformations (give them more correct
  information to work with)

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Generating Descriptive Names

• Connectors were called m1, m2
• We want m1 to mean the same thing in separate
  MSC.
• Simple approach did_X_do_Y
• Users can customize.

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Customizing Connector Messages

• Can use a specific protocol for connectors.
• Can specify own way of naming
• Can specify protocol between specific instances.

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Parallel Interleaving

• User might choose to generate all possibilities
  (for a synthesizer)
• Goal Generate one scenario for each possible
  parallel sequence interleaving.
• Now doing the simplest possibility taking
  sequences in order they are given in UCMNavXML.

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UCMExporter Sample Use

• Generate UCMNavXML with UCMNav
• Generate XMI, MSC, TTCN for the scenarios.
• Customize the communication patterns with your
  own XSL.
• Ask for parallel interleavings (now only the
  simplest form)
• View SD with Rational Rose
• View MSC with Tau 4.4

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UCMExporter Big Picture
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Demonstration

• Input Model simpletelephone ScenarioTLnotActiveSu
  ccess
• Output MSC, XMI
• View results
• Customization example
• View results
• Interleavings

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Thank You

• http//ucmexporter.sourceforge.net