Consistency Checking for LSC Specifications

• Published in: 2009 Third IEEE International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering pp. 119 - 126
• Main Authors: Hai-Feng Guo, Wen Zheng, Subramaniam, M.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.07.2009
• Subjects: Automata; Automatic testing; Computer languages; Computer science; Consistency Checking; Debugging; Hardware; Logic Programming; LSC; PLAY-tree; Software algorithms; Software engineering; Unified modeling language; USA Councils
• DOI: 10.1109/TASE.2009.8
• ISBN: 076953757X; 9780769537573

Live sequence charts (LSCs) have been proposed as an inter-object scenario-based specification and visual programming language. In this paper, we introduce a high level computational semantics of LSCs, in the form of a PLAY-tree, to show how a running LSC affects the system behaviors in response to a set of external events. Given a nonempty regular language of external events,the consistency of an LSC specification is defined as whether there exists a corresponding PLAY-tree with all success branches; in case of inconsistency, failure traces can be obtained through failure branches of the PLAY-tree. We also present an algorithm using a memoized depth-first search strategy and an implementation framework in logic programming for consistency checking of LSCs.