An Interactive Approach for Synthesizing UML Statechart Diagrams from Sequence Diagrams

Minimally Adequate Synthesizer (MAS) is an interactive algorithm that synthesizes UML statechart diagrams from sequence diagrams. It follows Angluin’s framework of minimally adequate teacher to infer the desired statechart diagram by consulting the user. To minimize the consultations needed, MAS keeps track of the interaction with the user. Together with its general knowledge about sequence diagrams, this allows MAS to operate without user’s help in most of the cases. A synthesized statechart diagram is a generalization, which accepts additional behavior to that described in the sequence diagrams given as input. During the synthesis process MAS asks the user if certain generalizations are allowed or not. We sketch the usage of two different kinds of inaccurate answers the user can provide. We allow Probably yes and Probably no answers, i.e. weak Yes and No answers. The information obtained from these answers is considered less significant than that obtained from normal, definite answers. The user can also postpone answering by saying later.