Automatic Transformation of UML Models into Analytical Decision Models

Emerging software dependency models, such as design structure matrices (DSMs), have been used in software design to capture and assess software modular structure and modularization activities. However, thinking and modeling design in terms of decisions and enumerating their dependencies are not straightforward. On the other hand, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a well-known and widely-used modeling technique. UML diagrams embody important design decisions and their relations. This paper presents an approach to automatically transform a UML class diagram into a logical design model, from which a DSM model can be automatically derived and the system can be automatically decomposed into modules (independent task assignments). Our approach is to formalize the dependency relations of UML class diagrams, automatically translate these relations into augmented constraint networks (ACN), decompose the ACN model into smaller sub-models, and derive DSM models. We use a small example to illustrate our approach, and evaluate the approach using a UML class diagram reverse engineered from Apache Ant. We show that our approach enables automatic translation of a UML model into analytical decision models and support automatic decomposition of a large system into independent decision modules.