Sced: a Tool for Dynamic Modelling of Object Systems

Dynamic modeling of object-oriented software makes use of scenario diagrams, i.e. descriptions of particular uses of a system in terms of message flow between the objects belonging to the system. Such diagrams help the designer to specify the general behavior of objects as state machines or as collections of methods. Several techniques are discussed for building automated tool support for the dynamic modeling aspects of object-oriented software development. The discussed techniques include synthesis of state machines and method descriptions on the basis of scenario diagrams, constructing scenario diagrams with the support of existing state machines, visualizing the run-time behavior of an object system, extracting state machines of objects from running systems, consistency checking between scenario diagrams and state machines, automated simplification of state machines using OMT notation, and automated layout for state machines.