Modular Solutions to Common Design Problems Using Activities and the Interface-Modular Method.

In order to enable automatic design synthesis it is necessary that functionality can be completely specified and that the so-called realizability problems can be detected and resolved. In this paper we focus on the second issue to resolve realizability problems. We assume a specification approach called the interface-modular method in which interfaces and core functionalities are specified and analyzed separately as modules that can be composed into complete specifications using UML collaborations and activities as the main notations. From this the designs can be derived by a process of direct synthesis whereby activities are localized to components in a manner that maintains the modularity. Such direct synthesis may contain so-called realizability problems that may need to be resolved. In this paper we propose and discuss modular solutions to the known realizability problems in terms of activities.