Title: Towards formalising use case maps in Maude strategy language: application to multi-agent systems

Authors: Farid Mokhati; Yahia Menassel

Addresses: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Oum El-Bouaghi, Oum El-Bouaghi, Algeria ' Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Tébessa, Tébessa, Algeria

Abstract: UCM (Use Case Maps) notation helps designers to capture system requirements and visualise design. UCM is mainly focused on system functionalities and they are easy to learn and understand. However, UCM suffers from a lack of standard formal semantics. This weakness can lead, in the rest of the development process, to several problems of inconsistency and ambiguity. In this paper, we present a novel approach for formalising UCM notation as an executable formal specification described in the Maude language Strategy, a recent extension of Maude. The main motivation of our work is essentially to provide a sound and rigorous description of complex systems described by UCM, which can help analysts, designers and developers, to automating their verification and validation processes. The proposed approach is applied on multi-agent systems (MAS) through of a real case study.

Keywords: UCM notation; multi-agent systems; MAS; Maude strategy language; formal specifications; translation; validation; agent-based systems; use case maps; formal semantics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2013.054347

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2013 Vol.47 No.2/3, pp.138 - 151

Published online: 05 Jun 2013 *

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