An object-oriented approach to formally analyze the UML 2.0 activity partitions

Nowadays, UML is the de-facto standard for object-oriented analysis and design. Unfortunately, the deficiency of its dynamic semantics limits the possibility of early specification analysis. UML 2.0 comes to precise and complete this semantics but it remains informal and still lacks tools for automatic validation. The main purpose of this study is to automate the formal validation, according a value-oriented approach, of the behavior of systems expressed in UML. The marriage of Petri nets with temporal logics seems a suitable formalism for translating and then validating UML state-based models. The contributions of the paper are threefold. We first, consider how UML 2.0 activity partitions can be transformed into Object Petri Nets to formalize the object dynamics, in an object-oriented context. Second, we develop an approach based on the object and sequence diagram information to initialize the derived Petri nets in terms of objects and events. Finally, to thoroughly verify if the UML model meets the system required properties, we suggest to use the OCL invariants exploiting their association end constructs. The verification is performed on a predicate/transition net explored by model checking. A case study is given to illustrate this methodology throughout the paper.