On the Assessment of Generative AI in Requirements Analysis and Modeling Tasks with UML:An Exploratory Study

Generative AI is rapidly employed by software developers to generate code or other software artifacts.However,the analysis and assessment of generative AI with respect to requirements analysis and modeling tasks,especially with UML,has received little attention.This paper investigates the capabilities of generative AI to aid in the creation of three types of UML models:UML use case models,class diagrams,and sequence diagrams.For this purpose,we designed an AI-aided UML modeling task in our course on software requirements modeling.50 undergraduates who majored in Software Engineering at Wuhan University completed the modeling task and the corresponding online survey.Our findings show that generative AI can help create these three types of UML models,but its performance is limited to identifying essential modeling elements of these UML models.

Formalization and Verification of Business Process Modeling Based on UML and Petri Nets

In order to provide a quantitative analysis and verification method for activity diagrams based business process modeling, a formal definition of activity diagrams is introduced. And the basic requirements for activity diagrams based business process models are proposed. Furthermore, the standardized transformation technique between business process models and basic Petri nets is presented and the analysis method for the soundness and well-structured properties of business processes is introduced.

Capability requirements modeling and verification based on fuzzy ontology

The capability requirements of the command, control, communication, computing, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance （C41SR） systems are full of uncertain and vague information, which makes it difficult to model the C41SR architecture. The paper presents an approach to modeling the capability requirements with the fuzzy unified modeling language （UML） and building domain ontologies with fuzzy description logic （DL）. The UML modeling constructs are extended according to the meta model of Depart- ment of Defense Architecture Framework to improve their domain applicability, the fuzzy modeling mechanism is introduced to model the fuzzy efficiency features of capabilities, and the capability requirement models are converted into ontologies formalized in fuzzy DL so that the model consistency and reasonability can be checked with a DL reasoning system. Finally, a case study of C41SR capability requirements model checking is provided to demonstrate the availability and applicability of the method.

Research of testing method based on UML statecharts

Unified modeling language （UML） is a powerful graphical modeling language with intuitional meaning. It provides various diagrams to depict system characteristics and complex environment from different viewpoints and different application layers. UML-based software development and modeling environments have been widely accepted in industry, including areas in which safety is an important issue such as spaceflight, defense, automobile, etc. To ensure and improve software quality becomes a main concern in the field. As one of the key techniques for software quality, software testing can effectively detect system faults. UML based software testing based is an important research direction in software engineering. The key to software testing is the generation of test cases. This dissertation studies an approach to generating test cases from UML statecharts.

Softw are Maintainability Prediction with UML Class Diagram

Software system can be classified into many function modules from the perspective of user. Unified modeling language( UML) class diagram of each function module was extracted,and design characteristic metrics which influenced software maintainability were selected based on UML class diagram.Choosing metrics of UML class diagram as predictors,and mean maintenance time of function module was regarded as software maintainability parameter. Software maintainability models were built by using back propagation( BP) neural network and radial basis function( RBF) neural network, respectively and were simulated by MATLAB. In order to evaluate the performance of models,the training results were analyzed and compared with leaveone-out cross-validation and model performance evaluation criterion. The result indicated that RBF arithmetic was superior to BP arithmetic in predicting software maintainability.

Aspect-oriented software reverse engineering

To solve the identification and comprehension problem of crosscutting concerns in existing legacy software system, a framework of aspect-oriented software reveme engineering is proposed. An approach on re-modularizing traversal features of legacy system is presented based on various unified modeling language （UML） diagrams. While modeling crosscutting concerns in UML use case diagrams, the non-functional requirements that affect several use case modules can be enveloped into aspect modules with a stereotype mechanism. The recurring message transmission patterns can be re-modularized as aspects in UML sequence diagrams with UML collaborations. Standard UML activity diagram notations are extended and modified by node fusion and addition, which support the graphical composition operation between crosscutting behaviors and primary business roles of concurrent systems. Case study indicates that travernal features of software system can be extracted and re-modularized from various perspectives in aspect-oriented reverse engineering, which improves comprehensibility and maintainability of legacy systems.

Validation of static properties in unified modeling language models for cyber physical systems

Cyber physical systems (CPSs) can be found nowadays in various fields of activity. The increased interest for these systems as evidenced by the large number of applications led to complex research regarding the most suitable methods for design and development. A promising solution for specification, visualization, and documentation of CPSs uses the Object Management Group (OMG) unified modeling language (UML). UML models allow an intuitive approach for embedded systems design, helping end-users to specify the requirements. However, the UML models are represented in an informal language. Therefore, it is difficult to verify the correctness and completeness of a system design. The object constraint language (OCL) was defined to add constraints to UML, but it is deficient in strict notations of mathematics and logic that permits rigorous analysis and reasoning about the specifications. In this paper, we investigated how CPS applications modeled using UML deployment diagrams could be formally expressed and verified. We used Z language constructs and prototype verification system (PVS) as formal verification tools. Considering some relevant case studies presented in the literature, we investigated the opportunity of using this approach for validation of static properties in CPS UML models.

Automatic Identification of Use Cases from Codes: A User’s Goal Driven Approach

Based on the different roles played by base flow and alternative flow in the process to achieve user＇s goals, we have found that loop structure is frequently used to implement alternative flow and/or to connect different use cases. This paper presents an approach to identify base flows and alternative flows of different use cases by traversing control flow graph in which back edges are eliminated. The effectiveness of the approach is verified by identification of the use case structure of an ATM system. The workload of human intervention of the approach is relatively slight, and the manner of human intervention closely follows the usual process of software comprehension.