Static Slicing of UML Architectural Models

We propose a technique for static slicing of UML models. We first transform a software architecture specified using UML into an intermediate representation which we have named Model Dependency Graph(MDG). MDG combines information available in various sequence diagrams along with the relevant information available in class diagrams into an integrated UML model. For a given slicing criterion, our slicing algorithm traverses the constructed MDG to identify the relevant model elements. Our algorithm’s novelty lies in its computing a slice based on an integrated UML model as against independently processing separate UML diagrams, and determining the implicit interdependencies among the different model elements distributed across various UML diagrams. We also briefly discuss a prototype tool named SSUAM(Static Slicer for UML Architectural Models) which we have developed to implement our algorithm.