An approach for reversely generating hierarchical UML statechart diagrams

One of the most crucial and complex steps of object-oriented system design lies in the transition needed to go from system behavior (defined by means of scenario models) to component behavior (described by means of communicating hierarchical state machine models). This paper presents a re-verse approach for generating hierarchical UML statechart diagrams. Firstly, we put forward a generation algorithm for a flat statechart diagram based on the BK-algorithm, which is validated useful in our reverse engineering tool XDRE by generating UML statechart diagrams from a set of UML sequence diagrams. Secondly, according to UML composite state, an automatic approach of introducing hierarchy to the generated flat statechart diagrams is proposed and implemented. Finally, systematic experiment is conducted in the paper in order to verify the validity of this approach.