Formal modeling and verification of UML Activity Diagrams (UAD) with FoCaLiZe

The UML Activity Diagram (UAD) is mostly used for modeling behavioral aspects of objects and systems. OCL (Object Constraint Language) is used together with UAD to specify guard conditions and action constraints. Due to the ambiguous semantics of UAD, it is relevant to formalize such diagrams using formal semantics and formal methods. In this paper, we opt for a formal transformation of UML activity diagrams denoted by functional semantics into FoCaLiZe, a proof based formal language. The ultimate goal is to detect eventual inconsistencies of UML activity diagrams and to prove their properties using Zenon, the automatic theorem prover of FoCaLiZe. In addition to the proposed formal basis for UAD. The presented approach directly supports action constraints, activity partitions and the communication between structural and dynamic aspects of UML models.