Systematic derivation of state machines from communication-oriented business process models

Model-driven development (MDD) is a promising paradigm for enterprise information systems. However, an open research challenge is to successfully integrate requirements practices into the MDD software lifecycle, and an open industrial challenge is to provide proper tool support for the complete software lifecycle. We propose to address these challenges by integrating Communication Analysis, (a communication-oriented requirements engineering method) and the OO-Method (a model-driven object-oriented software development method with full-fledged tool support and successful industrial practice). The OO-Method conceptual model offers four complementary views of the system under construction, which cover the structural, behavioural and presentation aspects. A requirements-based derivation of the Object Model (the structural view which consists of an extended UML Class Diagram) has been defined. This paper builds upon previous work by proposing a systematic technique for deriving the Dynamic Model (the behavioural view which consists of a collection of UML State Machines), taking as input the business process models. Some derivation guidelines are described and its usage is illustrated. The technique has been used in several lab demos that prove its feasibility. Moreover, the conceptual model that results from the structural and behavioural derivation can be used to automatically generate a fully-functional software application. As an additional benefit of the approach, the derivation allows tracing back and forth the elements of the requirements model, the conceptual model, and the final code.