Debugging Statecharts Via Model-Code Traceability

Abstract

Model-driven software development involves constructing behavioral models from informal English requirements. These models are then used to guide software construction. The compilation of behavioral models into software is the topic of many existing research works. There also exist a number of UML-based modeling tools which support such model compilation. In this paper, we show how Statechart models can be validated/debugged by (a) generating code from the Statechart models, (b) employing established software debugging methods like program slicing on the generated code, and (c) relating the program slice back to the Statechart level. Our study is presented concretely in terms of dynamic slicing of Java code produced from Statechart models. The slice produced at the code level is mapped back to the model level for enhanced design comprehension. We use the open-source JSlice tool for dynamic slicing of Java programs in our experiments. We present results on a wide variety of real-life control systems which are modeled as Statecharts (from the informal English requirements) and debugged using our methodology. We feel that our debugging methodology fits in well with design flows in model-driven software development.