Towards Automatic Transformation from UML Model to FSM Model for Web Applications

The need for automatic testing of large-scale web applications suggests the use of model-based testing technology. Among various modeling languages, UML is widely spread and used for its simplicity, understandability and ease of use. But rigorous analysis for UML model is difficult due to its lack of precise semantics. On the other hand, as a formal notation, FSM provides an avenue for automatic generation of test cases, but the requirement for mathematical basis makes itself academic inventions divorced from real applications. This paper proposes an approach to transforming UML model to FSM model, taking advantage of both languages. As our work focuses on the transformation of UML state diagrams to FSM models, a specific transformation mechanism is presented, which deals with different elements with different mapping rules. To illustrate the mechanism we proposed, an example of a web application for software download is presented. Finally, we give a method for implementation of the mechanism and a tool prototype to support the method.