Deriving
executable process descriptions from UML
E.
Di Nitto, L. Lavazza, M. Schiavoni, E. Tracanella, M. Trombetta
CEFRIEL
Politecnico di Milano
Abstract
In the recent past, a relevant effort has been devoted to the definition of
process modeling languages (PMLs). The resulting languages and environments
–although technically successful– did not receive much attention from
industry. On the contrary, researchers and practitioners have recently started
experimenting with the usage of UML as a PML. Being so popular and widely used,
UML has an important competitive advantage compared to any specialized PML.
However, it has also a main limitation. While most PMLs are executable by some
process engine, UML was conceived as a non-executable, semi-formal language. The
work described here aims at assessing the possibility of employing a subset of
UML as an executable PML. The article proposes a formalization of the semantics
of the UML subset and presents the translation of UML process models into code,
which can be enacted in the OPSS process-centered environment. The paper also
presents a case study to validate the approach. We expect that process modeling
by means of UML is easier and available to a larger community of software
process managers. Moreover, process enactment makes the process more efficient,
reliable, predictable and controllable, as widely shown by previous research.
