Formal Action Semantics for a UML Action Language

The abstractsyntax and static semantics of uml, the widely-used general- purpose graphical modeling language, have been standardized in a four-layer meta- modeling framework. however uml’s dynamic semantics, such as uml precise action semantics and the behaviors like activities, interactions and state machines, are only standardized in a naturallanguage—english. it is commonly argued that suchinformal description inevitably involves ambiguities and lacks rigorousness, precluding the early simulation and reasoning about a uml system design. here we select action semantics (as)as the vehicle to formalize uml. as is a mature semantics description framework which has advantages of intelligibility, modularity and practicability. in our approach, we formalize uml indirectly by formalizing its textual correspondent—an extended action language, which plays a key role as the interface between uml and its action semantics.