An Object Oriented Approach to Generate Executable Code from the OMT-based Dynamic Model

The Dynamic model, which is the most important model after the object model in Object Modeling Technique (OMT), represents the dynamic behavior of a system. This paper describes a new method to convert the dynamic model, represented as a state diagram, into e cient and compact executable code. In our approach, each operational state of a multi-state class is given the status of an object, which encapsulates all the transitions and actions of the state. The events that have transitions from the state become methods in the class for that state. States and transitions are thus made explicit without using any if or case statement, which leads to a compact and easy to understand implementation code. State hierarchy is implemented by inheritance and concurrent states are implemented by using the concept of object composition. The method has been successfully implemented in our automatic code generating system, O-Code, which generates executable Java code after reading the speci cations of the dynamic model. First the system transforms the state diagram representing the dynamic model into a table and then it generates actual code from the table. After comparing with Rhapsody, we have found that the code generated by O-Code is approximately 30% more e cient and ve times more compact than that of Rhapsody. keywords: code generation, object-oriented analysis/design, CASE tools, state transition diagrams.