Synthesizing Distributed Protocol Specifications from a UML State Machine Modeled Service Specification

TLDR: A synthesis method is proposed that automatically synthesizes the protocol specification of distributed protocol entities from the service specification, given that both types of specifications are modeled in UML protocol state machines.

Abstract: The object-oriented paradigm is widely applied in designing and implementing communication systems. Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a standard language used to model the design of object-oriented systems. A protocol state machine is a UML adopted diagram that is widely used in designing communication protocols. It has two key attractive advantages over traditional finite state machines: modeling concurrency and modeling nested hierarchical states. In a distributed communication system, each entity of the system has its own protocol that defines when and how the entity exchanges messages with other communicating entities in the system. The order of the exchanged messages must conform to the overall service specifications of the system. In object-oriented systems, both the service and the protocol specifications are modeled in UML protocol state machines. Protocol specification synthesis methods have to be applied to automatically derive the protocol specification from the service specification. Otherwise, a time-consuming process of design, analysis, and error detection and correction has to be applied iteratively until the design of the protocol becomes error-free and consistent with the service specification. Several synthesis methods are proposed in the literature for models other than UML protocol state machines, and therefore, because of the unique features of the protocol state machines, these methods are inapplicable to services modeled in UML protocol state machines. In this paper, we propose a synthesis method that automatically synthesizes the protocol specification of distributed protocol entities from the service specification, given that both types of specifications are modeled in UML protocol state machines. Our method is based on the latest UML version (UML2.3), and it is proven to synthesize protocol specifications that are syntactically and semantically correct. As an example application, the synthesis method is used to derive the protocol specification of the H.323 standard used in Internet calls.