Validation of Reactive Software from Scenario-Based Models

This thesis proposal suggests a model-based approach to obtain, from a set of behavioural scenarios of a given reactive software system, a graphical animation for reproducing that set of scenarios for validation purposes. The approach assumes that the requirements of the system are described by a use case diagram, being the behaviour of each use case detailed by a collection of scenario descriptions. These use cases and scenarios are transformed into a Coloured Petri Net (CPN) model, which is next complemented with animation-specific elements. By executing the CPN model, it is possible to animate the scenarios in a user-friendly way and thus ensuring an effective involvement of the users in the system´s validation. The CPN model is enforced to be (1) parametric, allowing an easy modification of the initial conditions of the scenarios, (2) environment-descriptive, meaning that it includes the state of the relevant elements of the environment, and (3) animation-separated, implying that the elements related to animation are clearly separated from the other ones. We validate our approach based on its application to two examples of reactive systems.