Improving design quality by automatic verification of activity diagram syntax

The quality of the product is an important issue in software development and quality assurance is an important aspect of any software design. One of the factors that affect the software quality is the correctness of its design. Any defect in the design can lead to high cost for defect correction. Activity diagrams are used to model the dynamic or behavioral aspects of the system. In this paper, an algorithm that analyzes activity diagrams and automatically verifies the syntax of each of its components is presented. Incomplete workflow can lead to incorrect results and a missing edge can lead to incomplete workflow. Mismatch in fork, join pair can lead to concurrency issues and synchronization problems. Detection of such errors in the design phase ensures product quality. The activity diagram is transformed to its components and analysis is performed on the components based on the syntactic specifications to detect errors. The workflow in the diagram and syntactic correctness of control flow are analyzed by the algorithm. Errors, if any, in the diagram are identified and a log of the errors is maintained in the error table. Analysis of the activity diagram and verification of its syntax can help in the development of a product whose quality is assured.