Data Flow Analysis of UML Action Semantics for Executable Models

Executable modeling allows the models to be executed and treated as prototype to determine the behavior of a system. These models use precise action languages to specify the algorithms and computational details required for execution. These action languages are developed on the basis of UML action semantics metamodel that provides the abstract syntax. The use of a concrete action language makes a traditional model work like an executable one. The actions specified by the action language might involve variables and their data values that are useful to be analyzed in terms of data flow. In this paper, we provide data flow analysis (DFA) of the standard UML action semantics that can be used with executable models. The analysis provides a generic data flow at the abstract syntax level and allows a mapping to any of the action languages providing the concrete syntax. Our approach does not focus on a particular action language; therefore it can easily be applied to any concrete syntax. We apply the proposed approach to a case study and identify the data flow from executable UML state machine.