Applying a Research PrototypeTool in Industrial Practice

Ottawa Carleton Institute for Computer Science

Umple: a Model Oriented Programming Language

University of Ottawa

Presented By: Omar BadreddinSupervised By: Timothy C. Lethbridge

obadr024@uottawa.catcl@site.uottawa.ca

April 18, 2023

FSE-18

Demo: Umple Online

http://cruise.site.uottawa.ca/umpleonline/

Demo: Eclipse Plug-in

http://cruise.site.uottawa.ca/umpleonline/download_eclipse_umple_plugin.html

Umple’s Vision

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So what is Umple?

Model-oriented programming

Adds UML abstractions to any OO language– Class and state diagrams

Removes boilerplate code

Allows simultaneous textual and diagrammatic modeling

Eliminates round-tripping– Don’t edit generated code, just embed your custom

code

My PhD work

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Runway State Machine

State machine implementation

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Umple Textual Editor

Umple Textual Editor

Total Number of tests: > 1644

Eclipse 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6Vista, XP, MAC

Grounded Theory study of Umple

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Challenges and Mitigation

Remaining Work

Refine implementation of Nested and concurrent states

Build more examples

Complete the grounded theory study of Umple users

Model versioning and UML action language (next slide)

Model Versionning and Merging

RSA: 712 – (~ 80 layout information) = 632.

Umple: About 35 lines of code (without layout information)

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UML Action Language

Proposed ALs are textual

Umple’s action language is Java or Php.

Using a bottom up approach to achieve a better action language by:

– Restricting existing OO language

(limit access to internal representation of state machine)

– Defining additional abstractions

(event names)

– Using language independent syntax

(Boolean expressions)

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BACK UP SLIDES

Research Questions

To what extent do software developers use state machines to model system behavior and specifications? What are the major factors behind that level of adoption?

Can the gap between state machine diagrams and code be minimized by incorporating core state machine abstractions in a high-level programming-like language?

To what extent could systems that do not use state machines abstractions be made to use them?

Hypotheses

H 1: Software developers can develop software more effectively if they can develop state machines in a similar manner to which they develop code.

H 2: State machine adoption in the software industry can be enhanced if core state machine concepts are incorporated in programming-like textual language.

“The biggest payoff will not come from new research but from putting old ideas into practice”

Pernars, D. ACM Fellow

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New Work: State Machine

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Code Island

Model Island

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Code Generation

Reverse Engineering

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In Umple Island, you get the best of both

Model in Code

Code in Model

Introduction 4

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Model Versioning and Merging

Existing tools use the XMI for persistence of models

XMI is relatively larger in size, high probability of conflicts

Software repositories do a good job with versioning and merging of code.

Umple syntax is highly concise and abstract

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