Lecture 09: State Chart Diagrams

CSC212A Software Development Fundamentals

Course Leader(s):
[Link]
[Link]@[Link]
Ms. Supriya, M. S.
[Link]@[Link]

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 Lecture Objectives

• At the end of this lecture, student will be able to

– Identify the basic building blocks of UML State diagrams
– Explain the concepts of object oriented design
– Model the behavior of objects in a software system with State diagrams
– Design the behavior of objects in a given software system with object
oriented approach

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 Lecture Topics

• State diagrams
• State chart diagram
• State machine and transitions
• Activity diagram
• Interaction overview diagrams
• Elements in State diagram
• Relationships in State diagram

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 State-chart Diagram

• State-chart diagrams address the dynamic view of a system

• A state-chart diagram shows a state machine, consisting of
– States
– Transitions
– Events
– Activities

• They used to model the behavior of an interface, class or

collaboration
• In object-oriented approaches, you draw a state machine
diagram for a single class to show the lifetime behavior of a
single object
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 State-chart Diagram

• State diagrams are good at

– Describing the behavior of an object across several use
cases
• State diagrams are not very good at
– Describing behavior that involves a number of objects
collaborating

• A State machine
– A behavior that specifies the sequences of states an object
goes through during its lifetime in response to events,
together with its responses to those events

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 State Machine

• A state
– Condition or situation during the life of an object during
which it satisfies some condition, performs some activity,
or waits for some event
• An event
– The specification of a significant occurrence that has a
location in time and space
• An action
– Executable atomic computation that results in a change in
state of the model or the return of a value
• Transition
– Indicates a movement from one state to another
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 Transition

Each transition has a label that comes in three parts

trigger-signature [guard]/activity
• The trigger-signature
– A single event that triggers a potential change of state
• The guard
– If present, is a Boolean condition that must be true for
the transition to be taken
• The activity
– Some behavior that's executed during the transition
– It may be any behavioral expression

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 Transition

All three parts to a transition are optional

– A missing activity indicates that you don't do anything
during the transition
– A missing guard indicates that you always take the
transition if the event occurs
– A missing trigger-signature is rare but does occur. It
indicates that you take the transition immediately, which
you see mostly with activity states

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 State Machine
Graphically
– A state is rendered as a rectangle with rounded corners
– A transition is rendered as a solid directed line

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 State Machine Diagrams

• The final state indicates that the state machine is completed,

implying the deletion of the controller object

• When an event occurs in a state,

– You can take only one transition out of it

• If you use multiple transitions with the same event

– The guards must be mutually exclusive

• If an event occurs and no transition is valid

– The event is ignored
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 Internal Activities

• Internal activities
– To react to events without transition in states
– Putting the event, guard, and activity inside the state box
itself
• An internal activity is similar to a self-transition: a transition
that loops back to the same state

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 Activity Diagram

• Address the dynamic view of a system

• An activity diagram is a special kind of a state-chart diagram
• It shows the flow from activity to activity within a system

• Activity diagrams
– Are used in modelling the function of a system
– Emphasize the flow of control among objects
– Collection of vertices and arcs
– A technique to describe procedural logic, business process,
and work flow
– They support parallel behavior (unlike flowcharts)

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 Activity Diagram

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 Activity Diagram

Activity diagrams commonly contain

– Action states
• Executable atomic computations
• They can not be further decomposed
• The nodes on an activity diagram
– Activity states
• Can be further decomposed
• Their activity can be represented by other activity
diagrams

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 Activity Diagram

– Transitions
• To specify the flow of control from one action/activity
state to the next action/activity state
• Represented as a simple directed line

– Objects
• Objects may be involved in the flow of control
associated with an activity diagram

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 Activity Diagrams

• Fork
– A fork has one incoming flow and several outgoing
concurrent flows

• Join
– With a join, the outgoing flow is taken only when all the
incoming flows reach the join

• Decision
– A decision, called branch 1, has a single incoming flow and
two guarded out-going flows
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 Activity Diagrams

• Guard
– Each outbound flow has a guard
– A Boolean condition placed inside square brackets
– Each time you reach a decision, you can take only one of
the outbound flows, so the guards should be mutually
exclusive

• Merge
– A merge has multiple input flows and a single output
– A merge marks the end of conditional behavior started by a
decision

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 A Simple Activity Diagram

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 Tokens

• The initial node creates a token, which then passes to the next
action, which executes and then passes the token to the next
• At a fork
– One token comes in, and the fork produces a token on each
of its outward flows
• On a join
– As each inbound token arrives, nothing happens until all
the tokens appear at the join; then a token is produced on
the outward flow

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 Summary
• State diagrams are good at describing the behavior of an
object across several use cases
• State diagrams are not very good at describing behavior that
involves a number of objects collaborating

• A State machine specifies the sequences of states an object

goes through during its lifetime in response to events,
together with its responses to those events
• A state-chart diagram shows a state machine, consisting of
– States
– Transitions
– Events
– Activities
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