Improving statechart composition and reuse in UML

Resume: Composite objects reveal themselves to be very useful in component-based development processes for the modeling, the management and the reuse of component assemblies. Although the composition relationship notion has been widely studied, in order to use the composite objects’ structure as a mean to model and manage complex data, few works have investigated the modeling of composite object behavior. Indeed, as far as component based development is concerned, the point is not only the building of complex data structures, but also the combination of the behavior of distinct objects in order to get them work as a coherent entity, which is embodied by a composite object. Classical object-oriented design methods, such as those based on the UML modeling language, do not provide adequate means for efficiently capturing the design of the global behavior of composite objects. As a consequence, they fall short in providing models which possess all the benefits expected from the use of composite objects, such as their ability to abstract complex assemblies. Thus we developed a specific design method for composite objects, called COBALT, which adresses the above issues by allowing a more abstract and declarative design of composite object behaviors. These concepts are provided as an extension to UML, in order to enhance its modeling capabilities for composite objects.