Towards reverse engineering of UML sequence diagrams of real-time, distributed systems through dynamic analysis

This thesis proposes a comprehensive methodology and instrumentation infrastructure for the reverse-engineering of UML (Unified Modeling Language) sequence diagrams from dynamic analysis. One motivation is of course to help people understand the behavior of systems with no (complete) documentation. However, such reverse-engineered dynamic models can also be used for quality assurance purposes. They can, for example, be compared with design sequence diagrams and the conformance of the implementation to the design can thus be verified. Furthermore, discrepancies can also suggest failures in meeting the specifications. We formally define our approach using metamodels and consistency rules. The instrumentation is based on Aspect-Oriented Programming in order to alleviate the overhead usually associated with source code instrumentation. A case study is discussed to demonstrate the applicability of the approach on a concrete example.