Prodeling with the Action Language for Foundational UML

Model-driven software development (MDSD) - a software engineering discipline, which gained more and more attention during the last few years - aims at increasing the level of abstraction when developing a software system. The current state of the art in MDSD allows software engineers to capture the static structure in a model, e.g., by using class diagrams provided by the Unified Modeling Language (UML), and to generate source code from it. However, when it comes to expressing the behavior, i.e., method bodies, the UML offers a set of diagrams, which may be used for this purpose. Unfortunately, not all UML diagrams come with a precisely defined execution semantics and thus, code generation is hindered. Recently, the OMG issued the standard for an Action Language for Foundational UML (Alf), which allows for textual modeling of software system and which provides a precise execution semantics. In this paper, an integrator between an UML-based CASE tool and a tool for Alf is presented, which empowers the modeler to work on the desired level of abstraction. The static structure may be specified graphically with the help of package or class diagrams, and the behavior may be added using the textual syntax of Alf. This helps to blur the boundaries between modeling and programming. Executable Java code may be generated from the resulting Alf specification.