Scenarios,
represented using variants of sequence diagrams, are popular means to
specify systems requirements. Live sequence charts (LSC), is a formal
and expressive scenario-based specification language, which has been
extensively studied over the last decade. Careful reading of the LSC
literature, however, reveals many variations and ambiguities in the
semantics of LSC, as it is used by different authors in different
contexts. Moreover, different works define their semantics of LSC using
different means. This variability, in both language features and means
of semantics definition, creates a challenge for researchers and tool
developers.
In this talk, I will show how we address this challenge by
investigating semantically configurable analysis. We define and
formalize the variability in the semantics of LSC using a feature model
and develop an analysis technique that can be instantiated to comply
with each of its legal configurations.Thus, the analysis is semantically
configured and its results change according to the semantics induced by
the selected feature configuration. The work is implemented and
demonstrated using examples. It advances the state-of-the-art in the
area of scenario-based specifications and provides an example for a
formal and automated approach to handling semantic variability in
modeling languages.