Applying a Research Prototype Tool in Industrial Practice Ottawa Carleton Institute for Computer Science Umple: a Model Oriented Programming Language University of Ottawa Presented By: Omar Badreddin Supervised By: Timothy C. Lethbridge 29 November 2015 FSE-18

Demo: Umple Online Demo: Eclipse Plug-in download_eclipse_umple_plugin.html

Umple’s Vision 3

So what is Umple?  Model-oriented programming  Adds UML abstractions to any OO language –Class and state diagrams  Removes boilerplate code  Allows simultaneous textual and diagrammatic modeling  Eliminates round-tripping –Don’t edit generated code, just embed your custom code

My PhD work 6 Build State Machine Syntax and Semantics Build Examples Conduct Empirical Studies Analyze and Evaluate Results Apply Findings to Umple

Runway State Machine

State machine implementation 9 Umple Textual Editor Editor Tests Tokens Tests Meta- Model Tests Generated Code Tests Generated System Tests Total Number of tests: > 1644 Eclipse 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6 Vista, XP, MAC

Grounded Theory study of Umple 10 Conduct Interviews TranscriptAnalyze

Challenges and Mitigation Challenges Mitigation Apply Umple in Industrial Projects Refine interview Questions Enhance EditorsUsability Number of Users and level of experience

Remaining Work  Refine implementation of Nested and concurrent states  Build more examples  Complete the grounded theory study of Umple users  Model versioning and UML action language (next slide)

Model Versionning and Merging  RSA: 712 – (~ 80 layout information) = 632.  Umple: About 35 lines of code (without layout information) 13

UML Action Language  Proposed ALs are textual  Umple’s action language is Java or Php.  Using a bottom up approach to achieve a better action language by: –Restricting existing OO language (limit access to internal representation of state machine) –Defining additional abstractions (event names) –Using language independent syntax (Boolean expressions) 14

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 BACK UP SLIDES

Research Questions  To what extent do software developers use state machines to model system behavior and specifications? What are the major factors behind that level of adoption?  Can the gap between state machine diagrams and code be minimized by incorporating core state machine abstractions in a high-level programming-like language?  To what extent could systems that do not use state machines abstractions be made to use them?

Hypotheses  H 1 : Software developers can develop software more effectively if they can develop state machines in a similar manner to which they develop code.  H 2 : State machine adoption in the software industry can be enhanced if core state machine concepts are incorporated in programming-like textual language.

“The biggest payoff will not come from new research but from putting old ideas into practice” Pernars, D. ACM Fellow 19

New Work: State Machine 20

Code Island Model Island 21

Code Generation Reverse Engineering 22

In Umple Island, you get the best of both Model in Code Code in Model Introduction 4 23

Model Versioning and Merging  Existing tools use the XMI for persistence of models  XMI is relatively larger in size, high probability of conflicts  Software repositories do a good job with versioning and merging of code.  Umple syntax is highly concise and abstract 24