Automated generation of activity and sequence diagrams from natural language requirements

Requirements analysis process involves developing abstract models for the envisioned or the proposed software system. These models are used to help refine and enrich the requirements for the system. Unified Modelling Language (UML) has become the standard for modelling software requirements. However, software requirements are captured in the form of Natural Language and, generating UML models from natural language requirements relies heavily on individual expertise. In this paper, we present an approach towards automated generation of behavioural UML models, namely activity diagrams and sequence diagrams. Our approach is based on transforming the requirements statements to intermediary structured representations — frames and then, translate them to the behavioural UML models. We are using Grammatical Knowledge Patterns and lexical and syntactic analysis of requirements statements to populate frames for the corresponding statements. Knowledge stored in frames is then used to automatically generate activity and sequence diagram. We present our approach through the case-studies performed.