querying the state of a state machine

[Rafael Chaves]

This is related to a thread I started a while ago ("state as a
condition for an operation"), but not quite the same. Basically, I
modeled the status of an expense reported using a state machine (which
was easy), and then needed to allow the user to find all expenses that
have some status (say, "all approved expenses"). The problem is that
it is not possible to implement a condition such as:

this.status == Approved

because, as far as I know (and that previous thread confirmed) there
is no built-in way to refer to states in UML (no "state literals").

I ended up having to "creatively model" state literal extending some
other literal metaclass with a stereotype that allows me to reference
a state machine state (vertex).

So, the question is: can you think of a better way?

You can read more about this (including more details on the
application being developed) here:

http://abstratt.com/blog/2013/01/11/checking-the-current-state-of-a-uml-state-machine/

Your feedback here or there is much welcome.

Thanks,

Rafael

[Remy Fannader]

Hi Rafael,
I've a limited experience with that kind of problem so I may be wrong. I thought it could be dealt with using StateChart and event-driven models, for instance with derived events signalling changing states as illustrated by the example below ?
http://caminao.wordpress.com/how-to-implement-symbolic-representations/patterns/functional-patterns/event-patterns/
Remy

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[david reye]

Rafael,

There is a way to express your query in UML

You can access an object's state using oclInState which is defined for all objects.

Assuming there is a static class operation called Expense::findAllApproved(), the following says that the result is the set of Expenses which are in the Approved state.

context Expense::findAllApproved() : Set(Expense)

post: result = Expense.allInstances()->select( oclInState(Approved) )

Cheers,

David

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David Reye

Software Systems Consultant

email: david...@codeworks.com.au

mobile: +61 404 471451

[Ken Lloyd]

UML abstractly handles preconditions and postconditions.

For a look at how to handle real-world instances of these using OCL, see:
http://www.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/courses/mod_ws06/skript/uml-ocl.pdf

Ken

[Rafael Chaves]

Thanks Ken and David for your replies. Unfortunately I am not using OCL, just UML by itself, including for specifying behavior and constraints.

Cheers,

Rafael

http://cloudfier.com

On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 6:41 AM, Ken Lloyd <kal...@wattsys.com> wrote:

UML abstractly handles preconditions and postconditions.

For a look at how to handle real-world instances of these using OCL, see:
http://www.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/courses/mod_ws06/skript/uml-ocl.pdf

io
Ken

[Rafael Chaves]

Hi Remy,

 

Let me know if I'm wrong, but my problem is about being able to reason on the state of objects for querying purposes, considering a frozen snapshot of the system (no events or transitions happening anywhere), so dynamics would not help.

Cheers,

Rafael

http://abstratt.com