What’s New in RSA 8.0 Beta 1 – Model simulation and animation

1. March, 2010 What’s New in RSA 8.0 Beta 1 – Model simulation and animation

2. Model Simulation and Animation • Simulating a model is a means to understand its dynamic behavior. • Simulation can be used already when the model is constructed, and helps finding and fixing problems early. • UML diagrams are animated during simulation to convey important run-time information to the user. • Simulation can be used as a form of “UML debugger” and the familiar Eclipse UI for debugging is therefore reused when simulating a model. • A specific use case is when simulating a scenario expressed as a UML behavior, and analyzing what communication that it implies between components in an IT architecture. • Helps an IT architect validate scenarios (use cases) against an IT architecture (existing or to be designed). • Facilitates communication with different stake holders by means of animating communication in the IT architecture. (A picture says more than a thousand words).

3. Main Features Already executed element • UML behavior models can be executed as a means to simulate the behavior • Activities • Interactions • State machines • Opaque Behaviors (using UAL) • Behavior diagrams are animated during execution • ”Next to execute” in activity, sequence and state chart diagrams • Tokens in activity diagrams • Active state in state chart diagrams • Executed elements in activity, sequence and state chart diagrams • Execution can be controlled • Stepping commands • Breakpoints • ”Run to here” • Suspend, Resume, Terminate, Restart etc. • Injecting events during execution • Run-time prompting Activity token Next element to execute Not yet executed element Active state Non-active state

4. Composite Structure and Topology Animations • When executing an interaction, messages between lifelines can be animated in composite structure and topology diagrams. • When executing an activity, token flows between partitions can be animated in a similar way.

5. Composite Structure and Topology Animations (cont’d) • Historic messages can be shown using colored arrows in a topology diagram. • Helps an IT architect study the communication impact of a scenario in an IT architecture described using topologies. Numbers on arrows refer to interaction message Arrows for ”call-reply” communicationhave the same color

6. Simulating Event-Driven Models • The Events view allows events to be defined,including their actual arguments. • The Events view can be automatically populated,both at run-time and design-time. • The Events view supports filtering based on selectionand by regular expression filters. • Defined events can be imported from and exported to the file system. • It is possible to navigate to the signal definitionfor an event. • Events can be sent to the model from the Events view, for example by means of drag’n’drop. • Events may have wildcard arguments which are replaced with actual values when the event is sent. • Pending events are shown in the Debug view and actual arguments can be manipulated using the Variables view.

7. Run-time Prompting • Allows the user to interactively control the flow of execution by means of dialogs that appear at run-time. • Makes it possible to simulate a model early, before all conditions have been formally defined. • Allows informal-style models to be simulated. • Examples: • Which activity edge to take after a decision node? • How many times to iterate an interaction combined fragment loop? • Which trigger-less transition to execute after a state has been exited?