Testing the Consistency of Dynamic

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) offers different diagrams to depict the behavior of a modeled system and its elements. When employing different diagrams during modeling, it has to be ensured that these different specifications are consistent. The consistency conditions depend on the diagrams involved, the development process employed, and the current stage of the development. In order to ensure consistency, there is a need for a consistency description which is formal and precise, yet understandable and easily adoptable to new requirements. Furthermore, an automatic validation of models according to the consistency conditions is necessary. We propose dynamic meta modeling rules as a notation for the consistency conditions and provide the concept for an automated testing environment using these rules. 1 INTRODUCTION When the UML was created in 1997 it was one of the goals of its construction to combine the advantages of different existing modeling notations and integrate them to a unified modeling language (UML) [Obj01]. One of the results of this process is the multitude of UML diagrams that describe the dynamic behavior of model elements. Each of these diagrams focuses on a different aspect of the behavior or is suited for special purposes. Typically, statechart diagrams are used to display the acceptable behavior of a class, sequence diagrams to express the temporal order of messages, collaboration diagrams to focus on the structure of complex interactions , and activity diagrams to capture whole processes. But this multitude of behavioral diagrams is not only a strength of the UML, it is also one of its biggest problems. Whenever a model employs different dynamic diagrams, it has to be determined if and how the different aspects represented in them fit together to express the behavior of the objects involved. This problem is addressed under the term 'consistency of diagrams'. It has already been investigated by various researchers (see