Transformation From UML Interaction Diagram to Contract Specification and Its Implementation

Contract is a kind of formal specification language. It specifies behavioral dependency of a set of objects collaborated to accomplish some tasks. It can be used as cluster specification in object-oriented software development where it specifies the collaborations of classes. By explicitly describing the message passing through objects, contract is suitable for object-oriented testing. TACCLE—a systematic methodology of object-oriented software testing, is based on contract used as cluster specification. But for formal specification, good mathematic training is required for its users (including analysts, designers and testers) and its popularization is difficult. UML is a main modeling language in recent years. It is directly perceived through the sense, and so is easy to be understood. More and more developers are getting familiar with it. UML interaction diagrams (including Sequence diagram and Collaboration diagram) specify the interactions between objects within the system specified. If we can transform UML model to contract specifications, software system modeling by UML then can be tested using TACCLE.In this thesis, we propose an algorithm of transformation from UML interaction diagram to contract specification. Because most UML tools do not implement all UML semantics, an algorithm of transformation based on the general UML implementation is also discussed. Furthermore, we also give an algorithm of transformation from UML interaction diagram expressed in XML to Contract specification. The prototype of the algorithm is implemented, and a case study is performed on the prototype.