System architecture modeling using UML and real-time process algebra (RTPA)

The software industry preferred approach to capture system architectures is the use of visualization techniques in the form of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Although UML has expressive graphical constructs that is easily understood, it is generally viewed to be informal when compared to formal methods such as RTPA. The intention is to propose an approach to allow the creation of a transformation template that will convert UML models into formal method representation such as RTPA. The contributions of this thesis are in the form of defining a process in applying lexical relationships to measure semantic similarity between UML and a formal method such as RTPA. This process is then able to be matured to increase the accuracy of semantic similarity matching and lead the way towards determining semantic content of system architectures. Preliminary results from this research were published at the 2006 Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering Conference.