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Visual Notation and Patterns for Abstract State Machines

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Software Technologies: Applications and Foundations (STAF 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9946))

Abstract

Formal models are a rigorous way to specify informal system requirements. However, they are not widely used in practice, since they are considered difficult to develop and understand. Visualization is often considered a good means for people to communicate and to get a common understanding. We here make a proposal of a visual notation for Abstract State Machines (ASMs), and we introduce visual trees that visualize ASM transition rules. In addition to these graphical components that are based only on the syntactical structure of the model, we also present visual patterns that permit to visualize part of the behavior of the machine. A tool is also available to graphically represent ASM models using the proposed notation.

The research reported in this paper has been partly supported by the Charles University research funds PRVOUK, and by the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology, the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy, and the Province of Upper Austria in the frame of the COMET center SCCH.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://asmeta.sourceforge.net/.

  2. 2.

    Note that the complete formalization of the case study consists of a sequence of refined models, each one specifying more details of the therapy.

  3. 3.

    Note that the pattern can be detected by a simple static analysis of the model because of the particular guard structure we consider. If we would like to handle any type of guard, detecting the pattern would require to use a logical solver.

  4. 4.

    http://asmeta.sourceforge.net/download/asmetavis.html.

  5. 5.

    https://www.eclipse.org/gef/zest/.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Paolo Arcaini

  2. Department of Economics and Technology Management, Information Technology and Production, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy

    Silvia Bonfanti & Angelo Gargantini

  3. Software Competence Center Hagenberg GmbH, Hagenberg, Austria

    Silvia Bonfanti

  4. Dipartimento di Informatica, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Elvinia Riccobene

Authors
  1. Paolo Arcaini
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  2. Silvia Bonfanti
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  3. Angelo Gargantini
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  4. Elvinia Riccobene
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Silvia Bonfanti .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, Universita di Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Paolo Milazzo

  2. Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary

    Dániel Varró

  3. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Manuel Wimmer

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Arcaini, P., Bonfanti, S., Gargantini, A., Riccobene, E. (2016). Visual Notation and Patterns for Abstract State Machines. In: Milazzo, P., Varró, D., Wimmer, M. (eds) Software Technologies: Applications and Foundations. STAF 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9946. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50230-4_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50230-4_12

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