Designing the automatic transformation of visual languages

The design process of complex systems requires a precise checking of the functional and dependability attributes of the target design. The growing complexity of systems necessitates the use of formal methods, as the exhaustiveness of checks performed by the traditional simulation and testing is insufficient.For this reason, the mathematical models of various formal verification tools are automatically derived from UML-diagrams of the model by mathematical transformations guaranteeing a complete consistency between the target design and the models of verification and validation tools.In the current paper, a general framework for an automated model transformation system is presented. The method starts from a uniform visual description and a formal proof concept of the particular transformations by integrating the powerful computational paradigm of graph transformation, planner algorithms of artificial intelligence, and various concepts of computer engineering. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]