Tool Support to Automate Transformations from SBVR to UML Use

Case Diagram

Imane Essebaa and Salima Chantit

Computer Laboratory of Mohammedia (LIM), Faculty of Sciences and Techniques Mohammedia,

Hassan II University of Casablanca, Mohammedia, Morocco

Keywords:

Model Driven Architecture, Model Transformation, Semantic Business Vocabulary and Business Rules, UML

Use Case Diagram.

Abstract:

Model transformation becomes a very important technique in software engineering as it helps to guarantee

traceability between models and develop software applications quickly, In this context, the purpose of this

work is an approach that allows generating UML Use Case Diagram (UCD) from Semantic Business Vocabu-

lary and Business Rules (SBVR) which is a standard introduced by OMG that can be used to capture software

requirements in structured English. The paper gives a set of rules that map SBVR element into UCD elements.

This approach is a part of our works that focus on automating Model Transformations to generate the applica-

tion code following standards of Model Driven Architecture approach. Particulary we use SBVR standard and

UCD to model the Computation Independent Model (CIM) which is the ﬁrst level of abstraction. The paper

describes also an implementation of this approach as an Eclipse plug-in that automates the transformation

rules deﬁned using QVT language. In order to well illustrate our approach, we apply it on RentalCarAgency

system.

1 INTRODUCTION

System designing is an essential step in software de-

velopment process. It acts as a bridge between the de-

veloper, the software designer and a simple user of the

system. There exist different ways to ensure a good

analysis of system requirements. Use Case Diagram

(UCD) is an essential artefact in systems functional

requirements analysis and speciﬁcation. Indeed UCD

provides a visual representation of possible interacti-

ons between system actors and their functionalities.

In order to have a good design of the system that may

be used to generate other models, it is necessary to

have a well-described requirements, that is why it is

recommended to use a structured language. In this

paper, we focus on structured English language using

SBVR.

Generating models from others using model trans-

formation rules becomes an important technique to

ensure traceability and link between system require-

ments and their design. Several approaches were pro-

posed in this context, to transform UML diagrams,

however few of them focused on generating UML dia-

grams, from structured requirements using SBVR (es-

pecially generating UCD).

Existing works concerning transformations bet-

ween SBVR and UML diagrams focused on the map-

ping to generate Class Diagram and Activity Dia-

gram. Furthermore few works have considered the

transformation from UCD to SBVR.

In this paper we propose an approach to generate

automatically UCD from SBVR. This approach is a

part of our works that aim to automate transformati-

ons between different levels of MDA, where we have

represented CIM level by SBVR and UCD. Then from

CIM, we generate other MDA levels to obtain ﬁnally

a generated application source code. Generating UCD

from SBVR ensure traceability between requirements

and other levels. In order to ensure automated trans-

formations between levels, we present in this paper

an approach that deﬁnes a set of transformation rules,

developed with QVT language that we implement in

an Eclipse plug-in.

This paper is organized as follows; section 2 gives

an overview of concepts used to implement our ap-

proach. In section 3, we discuss the related works and

in section 4, we describe the proposed approach and

its implementation. In section 5, we present the appli-

cation of the approach on a RentalCarAgency system

example and in section 6, we discuss and evaluate our

Essebaa, I. and Chantit, S.

Tool Support to Automate Transformations from SBVR to UML Use Case Diagram.

DOI: 10.5220/0006817705250532

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2018), pages 525-532

ISBN: 978-989-758-300-1

525

approach Finally, we ﬁnish by a conclusion and some

perspectives.

2 OVERVIEW OF CONTEXT

2.1 Model Transformation

The execution of transformations between models en-

sures traceability of links between different models.

This link is a guarantee of quality in the software de-

velopment process. The transformation process pro-

posed takes as input source models, applies transfor-

mation rules, and generate target models. This pro-

cess conforms to Model Object Facility (MOF, 2009)

which is an OMG standard that allows describing me-

tamodels and their manipulation. Figure 1, illustrates

the process of model transformation. A model trans-

formation is like a function that takes as input parame-

ters a set of models and returns in output another set

of models. Those models, input and output, are struc-

tured by meta-models that specify the model transfor-

mation executed on models.

The MOF (Meta Object Facility) is normalized by

OMG, it allows the deﬁnition of transformation rules

and modeling languages, it also speciﬁes the struc-

ture and syntax of meta-models. In this context, the

OMG proposes a standard transformation language

QVT(Query/view/transformation) to deﬁne transfor-

mation rules from models to models.

Figure 1: Relationship between the model transformation

and meta-models.

2.2 Query / View / Transformation

(QVT)

To implement our transformations, we have to use a

transformation language. There exist many models of

transformations language, but QVT is the unique pro-

posal of the OMG. The QVT standard deﬁnes three

model transformation languages: QVT Operational,

QVT Relational and QVT core. We chose QVT Ope-

rational because it supports bidirectional transforma-

tions, both horizontal and vertical transformations,

and ensures automatic traceability(MOF, 2009).

3 RELATED WORKS

Model Transformations are considered as an impor-

tant approach. Several works were made in this con-

text. However, most of them focused on transformati-

ons between different UML diagrams, and just a few

ones were focused on the transformations from SBVR

to UML diagrams. In this section, we present our ana-

lysis of these works:

T.Skersys and al. propose in their paper (Skersys

et al., 2014) an approach that generate well-structured

business vocabularies and rules using SBVR from the

formalized requirements speciﬁcations expressed via

Use Case diagrams. The paper propose an algorithm

that deﬁnes UML2SBVR transformations which were

implemented in MagicDraw tool. These transforma-

tions however are semi-automatic.

In their paper (Afreen et al., 2011) H. Afreen and

al. proposed an approach to extract manually Object-

Oriented informations from SBVR then to generate

Class model. The paper proposes a conception of an

eclipse plug-in called SBVR2UML that may generate

Class model but it does not contain any description

on how the link is made between these elements.We

also note that this approach does not automate trans-

formations between SBVR and UML Class Model.

Indeed the Object-Oriented informations are genera-

ted manually. Moreover, the paper deﬁnes just a con-

ception of an eclipse plug-in called SBVR2UML. We

note also that this approach does not deﬁne how to

generate other diagrams such as Sequence Diagram

or Activity Diagram.

A.Raj and al. present in their paper (Raj et al.,

2008), an approach to transform SBVR in more than

just one UML diagrams: Class Diagram and Activity

Diagram. We note that this approach describes for

each generation, the algorithm to follow in order to

get UML Diagrams. But this generation is still li-

mited as it does not, for example, deﬁne how to get

parameters of Class operations. Furthermore, in or-

der to generate Activity Diagram, the approach takes

into account just ”if-then” conditions but it does not

explain how it will be transformed and how the dia-

gram is generated.In this paper, authors consider the

SBVR standard in the CIM level of MDA, while ge-

nerated UML diagrams (Class Diagram, Activity Di-

agram and Sequence Diagram) represent the PIM le-

vel. We also note that the Activity Diagram contains

the same information as the Sequence Diagram mo-

MDI4SE 2018 - Special Session on Model-Driven Innovations for Software Engineering

526

deled differently and their use at the same level does

not add more information.

4 PROPOSED APPROACH

In this section, we present our proposed approach to

generate UCD from SBVR that represent system re-

quirements in a structured English.

4.1 CIM Level in Our Approach

The CIM level is the most abstract level in MDA ap-

proach. This level is considered as the most impor-

tant because it models system requirements, and from

this model, we can generate the other levels of MDA.

Thus, other models are affected if any changes are

made in CIM level.

In order to respect OMG recommendations to well

model CIM level and to ensure traceability between

models, we propose to represent it by an extended Use

Case Diagram generated from OMG standard SBVR.

4.2 SBVR Meta-model

The OMG standard Business Vocabulary and Busi-

ness Rules (SBVR), is a speciﬁcation that was accep-

ted by the OMG in 2005. The basic idea behind

SBVR is to express requirements in a structured lan-

guage (SBV, 2008). It allows the business analyst or a

business person to express system requirements using

structured English instead of using its own language.

Using SBVR to express business requirements af-

fect a semantic to business rules and business vocabu-

lary and give more details about the system, such as

Business Management Rules that describes the inte-

raction between system elements. A meta-model di-

agram of main fragments of SBVR is presented in ﬁ-

gure 2.

Figure 2: Main fragments of Semantic Business Vocabulary

and Business rules Meta-model.

4.3 UML Use Case Diagram

Meta-model

OMG (Object Management Group) deﬁnes a Use

Case Diagram as the speciﬁcation of a set of actions

performed by a system, which yields an observable

result that is, typically, of value for one or more actors

or other stakeholders of the system (OMG, 2011).

A Use Case Diagram is such a bridge that covers

the gap between the simple user of the system and the

software designer, indeed it gives a general view of

the system, in our approach UCD is generated from

SBVR in order to ensure traceability between system

requirements and its design. A simpliﬁed version of

the meta-model of the extended Use Case Diagram is

represented in ﬁgure 3.

Figure 3: Main fragments of Use Case Diagram Meta-

model.

4.4 Transformation Rules

In this section, we will deﬁne different transforma-

tion rules that allow the automatic generation of UCD

from SBVR.

The transformation process proposed takes as in-

put source models, applies transformation rules, and

generate target models. This process conforms to

MOF (Model Object Facility) which is an OMG stan-

dard that allows describing meta-models and their

manipulation.

The Table 1 below describes transformation rules

to automatically generate UML Use Case Diagram

from SBVR.

4.4.1 Transformation Rules Description

This section gives more details on each transforma-

tion rule deﬁned

1. IndividualConcept2System: The Individual Con-

cept that has System as a general Concept is tur-

ned into a System in UCD.

Tool Support to Automate Transformations from SBVR to UML Use Case Diagram

527

Table 1: Transformation rules to generate UML UCD from SBVR.

N Rule Source Model Target Model

1 IndividualConcept2System Individual Concept System

2 NounConcept role2Actor

Noun Concept with Role

as a general concept

Actor

3 NounConcept objectType2DataObject

Noun Concept with Object

Type as a general concept

Data Object

4 Verb AssociativeFactType2UseCase

Verb of Association

Fact Type

Use Case element

5 AssociativeFactType2Association Association Fact Type Association

6 IsObligatory BusinessRule2Include Is Obligatory Business Rule Include

7 IsPossible BusinessRule2Extend Is Possible Business Rule Extend

8 IsPermitted BusinessRule2Generalization Is Permitted Business Rule Generalization

IsNecessary BusinessRule2

Association UseCase DataObject

Is Necessary Business Rule

Association between

Use Case element

and Data Object

Figure 4: Examples of individual concept.

2. NounConcept role2Actor: The Noun Concept in

SBVR that has Role as a general concept is turned

into an Actor in UCD.

Figure 5: Examples of Role Noun Concept.

3. NounConcept objectType2DataObject: The

Noun Concept in SBVR that has Object Type as

general concept is turned into a DataObject in

UCD.

Figure 6: Example of Object Noun Concept.

4. Verb AssociativeFactType2UseCase: The verb in

Associative Fact Type in SBVR is turned into a

Use Case element in UCD. The Name of the Use

Case Element is a combination of the Verb and the

Noun Concept that follows the Verb in the Asso-

ciative Fact Type.

Figure 7: Example of Association Fact Type.

5. Associative FactType2Association: The Associa-

tive Fact Type between two Noun Concepts is tur-

ned into an Association between the correspon-

ding Use Case Element and an Actor, or between

Use Case Element and DataObject if it exists.

Figure 8: Examples of Association Fact Type verb.

6. Is Obligatory BusinessRule2Include: It

Is Obligatory business rules are turned into

Include association between Use Case Elements

generated from the two Associative Fact types

used in the rule. The Include association is

redirected from the Use Case Element generated

from the second Associative Fact Type to the Use

Case Element generated from the ﬁst Associative

Fact Type.

Figure 9: Examples of Is Obligatory Business Rule.

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528

7. IsPossible BusinessRule2Extend: It Is Possible

business rule is turned into Extend association if

the rule is used with two Associative Fact Type.

The Extend association is redirected from the Use

Case Element generated from the ﬁrst Associa-

tive Fact Type to the Use Case Element generated

from the second Associative Fact Type.

Figure 10: Example of Is Possible Business Rule.

8. IsPermitted BusinessRule2Generalization: It Is

Permitted business rule is turned into Generaliza-

tion association if the rule is used with two As-

sociative Fact Types. The Generalization associa-

tion is redirected from the Use Case Element ge-

nerated from the ﬁrst Associative Fact Type to the

Use Case Element generated from the second As-

sociative Fact Type.

Figure 11: Example of Is Permitted Business Rule.

9. IsNecessary BusinessRule2Association UseCase

DataObject: The association between a UseCase

element and a DataObject element is generated

from Is Necessary Business Rule between system

generation fact type and a corresponding fact type

that will be generated into the UseCase element.

Figure 12: Example of is necessary Business Rule.

4.5 Implementation of Our Approach

To implement our approach, we need tools that al-

low creating input elements (Business Vocabulary and

Business Rules). After analyzing and testing exis-

ting tools, we found that the unique tool that supports

SBVR is an eclipse plug-in called Vetis which was

implemented for an old version of Eclipse to support

SBVR standard. Concerning UML editors we choose

Papyrus because it supports all UML diagrams ele-

ments. According to this, we choose to implement

our solution as an Eclipse plug-in to beneﬁt from the

existing tools and also to facilitate the use of our im-

plemented solution by designers and developers.

4.5.1 Papyrus Modeling Tool

Papyrus is an Open Source UML tool based on

Eclipse. It was developed by the Laboratory of Model

Driven Engineering and Embedded Systems and can

be used as a standalone tool or as an Eclipse Plug-in.

Papyrus is designed to be easily extensible because it

is based on UML proﬁle. In our approach, we used

Papyrus as an Eclipse plug-in that we extend to sup-

port DataObject elements in Use Case Diagram. As

papyrus is based on EMF (Eclipse Modeling Frame-

work) tool that allows creating UML diagrams, we

start by extending the EMF plug-in to deﬁne DataOb-

ject element and its speciﬁcations to be used by Use

Case Diagram. Then, we conﬁgure Papyrus in order

to add DataObject element in Use Case Diagram, so

that it can be accessible from the palette menu.

4.5.2 Vetis Plug-in

Vetis tool was implemented to support transforma-

tions from SBVR to UML&OCL. It was based on

Eclipse platform 3.4.1 and it supports UML 2.0.

SBVR 1.0 and ATL. In our approach we use Vetis

plug-in to recognize SBVR elements and their struc-

ture and to beneﬁt from the editor of SBVR standard.

4.5.3 Our Eclipse Plug-in

Plug-in is a software component used in computing

that adds a speciﬁc features to an existing compu-

ter program. The plug-in we have developed, deﬁ-

nes transformations rules based on QVT (Query View

transformation). These rules are automatically exe-

cuted from a Java program. The plug-in takes as in-

put a Papyrus Project that contains Business Vocabu-

lary and Business Rules expressed using SBVR stan-

dard. The ”Transforms” feature added in the menu,

allow the execution of transformations deﬁned auto-

matically. As result of transformations, an out folder

is created in the Papyrus Project that contains the out-

put generated Use Case Diagram. The ﬁgure 13 below

shows the ”transforms” menu and the architecture of

Papyrus project.

5 CASE STUDY

In order to illustrate our approach and the transfor-

mation rules deﬁned, this section shows how to apply

the approach on a RentalCarAgency application. The

example is described as follow: The application to re-

alize must guarantee the following services:

• Visualization of available cars.

Tool Support to Automate Transformations from SBVR to UML Use Case Diagram

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Figure 13: Papyrus Project Architecture and ”Transforms”

menu.

• Customers subscription.

• Booking of cars.

• Visualization of reservations.

• Management of reservations (accept/decline).

• Management of cars.

• Management of customer accounts.

• Management of accounts Managers.

The application has three users proﬁles that have dif-

ferent privileges :

• Customer: A person who can view the cars avai-

lable in the agency, rates and promotions and may

subscribe. Once registered, the visitor becomes a

client of the Agency. A client must authenticate in

the system to search for available cars and book a

car by indicating the reservation date and time.

• Manager: A Manager must also authenticate to

view all cars, add, edit or remove cars and view

the bookings made by customers waiting for vali-

dation to decide to accept or refuse them.

• Administrator: Once authenticated into the sy-

stem, the administrator has the privilege of mo-

difying and deleting a customer account, as well

as the management of managers account (add,

change or delete).

We can deﬁne some management rules as below:

• A customer can rent several cars.

• A car can be rented by 0 or several customers.

• A manager can manage 1 or more cars.

• A car is managed by 1 or more managers.

• An administrator can manage 1 or several custo-

mer accounts.

• An administrator can manage 1 or more account

managers.

After analysing the application requirements, the

designer should standardize the requirements with

Structured English using Business Vocabulary and

Business Rules with the OMG standard SBVR, the

ﬁrst step is to deﬁne the vocabulary of the applica-

tion and specify General Concept for each element.

A part of Business vocabulary is deﬁned in the ﬁgure

14. After applying the transformation rules already

described in previous sections we got the following

results presented in table 2.

Figure 14: Papyrus Project Architecture and ”Transforms”

menu.

Figure 15: Example of Business Vocabulary of RentalCa-

rAgency application.

Figure 16: Example of Business Rules of RentalCarAgency

application.

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530

Table 2: Application of transformation rules on RentalCarAgency system.

N Rule Source Model Target Model

1 IndividualConcept2System RentalCarAgency RentalCarAgency System

2 NounConcept role2Actor

- Customer

- Manager

- Admin

- Customer

- Manager

- Admin

3 NounConcept objectType2DataObject - Rental - Rental

4 Verb AssociativeFactType2UseCase

- admin manages account

- manager manages rental

- customer books car

- manager rejects rental

- manages account

- manages rental

- books car

- rejects rental

5 AssociativeFactType2Association

- admin manages account

- manager manages rental

- customer books car

- Association between ”admin”

and ”manages account” use case

- Association between ”manager”

and ”manages rental”

- Association between ”customer”

and ”books car”

6 IsObligatory BusinessRule2Include

- It is obligatory that customer

logs into system if customer books car

- It is obligatory that manager logs into

system if manager manages rental

- Include Association from ”customer

books car” to ”customer logs into system”

- Include Association from ”manager

manages rental” to ”manager logs into system”

7 IsPossible BusinessRule2Extend

- It is possible that customer books

car if customer views car catalog

- Extend Association from ”customer

books car” to ”customer views car catalog”

8 IsPermitted BusinessRule2Generalization

- It is permitted that manager accepts

rental if manager manages rental

- It is permitted that manager rejects

rental if manager manages rental

- ”manages rental” is a

generalization of ”rejects rental”

- ”manages rental” is a

generalization of ”accepts rental”

IsNecessary BusinessRule2

Association UseCase DataObject

- It is necessary that system generates

rental if customer books car

- Rental is a dataObject of

”customer books car” use case

Table 2 deﬁnes elements of Use Case Diagram which

are automatically generated using the developed plug-

in which is based on Transformation rules previously

deﬁned, the ﬁgure 16 below presents the generated

Use Case Diagram of RentalCarAgency system:

Figure 17: Generated Use Case Diagram of RentalCarA-

gency application.

6 ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

In order to evaluate our approach, we make a compa-

rison between results of existing approaches and ours.

The comparison is based on two axes; the ﬁrst one is

about transformation rules and their automation, and

the second one is about the integration of SBVR to

UML transformations on MDA approach.

At the moment of preparing this work, we could

not ﬁnd works that directly deal with our approach.

We note that most of the previous approaches propose

transformations from SBVR to different UML dia-

grams; Class Diagram, Activity Diagram, Sequence

Diagram. The only work that discuss transformations

between SBVR and UCD is the work of T.Skersys

and al. where they propose a semi-automatic appro-

ach to generate SBVR from UML Use Case Diagram.

We mention that this proposed approach of automa-

ting transformations from SBVR to UML Use Case

Diagram is a part of our works that concerns transfor-

mations between different level of MDA. The current

work aims to automate transformation in CIM level to

ensure traceability with PIM and PSM levels that will

be generated through successive vertical transforma-

tions. Concerning previous works already sited in re-

lated works section, few of them have mentioned that

their approaches of transformations between SBVR

and UML are included in MDA approach. In the next

Tool Support to Automate Transformations from SBVR to UML Use Case Diagram

531

Table 3, we summarize the analysis done on our ap-

proach and existing ones that transforms SBVR to

UML diagrams. We study if proposed methods ensure

transformation rules to generate UML from SBVR

and if these rules are implemented automatically.

Table 3: Analyse and discussion of different approaches of

SBVR to UML transformations.

Methods SBVR to UML transformations

Rules Automation

Skersys and al. P P

Arfeen and al. P N

Raj and al. P N

Nemuraite and al. P N

Essebaa and al. (current approach) Y Y

legend: P: Partial, Y: Yes, N: No

As we show in table 3, all presented approaches

even if they partially deﬁne transformation rules, they

didn’t ensure their automation. Our approach provi-

des transformation rules to generate UML Use Case

Diagram from SBVR, and this paper describes the im-

plementation of these rules in an eclipse plug-in to

ensure their automation.

7 CONCLUSION

In this paper, we have presented our approach con-

cerning SBVR to UCD transformations in CIM le-

vel. This approach aims to ensure traceability bet-

ween models in other MDA levels, as PIM and PSM

ones are generated from the CIM level.

Furthermore, the UCD generated from SBVR can

be used to eliminate the gap between a simple user

and design analysts. This work is a part of our pre-

vious (Essebaa and Chantit, 2017) and future works

focused on automating transformations between mo-

dels in order to generate code. In our future works,

we aim to propose approaches that aim to automate

all the process of MDA until code generation.

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