Behavioural specifications from class models

This paper illustrates a technique to automatically derive intra-object behaviours (in the form of state diagrams) from an object model. We demonstrate how we may take specifications, written in a restricted language of pre- and postconditions, and generate protocols of usage that represent possible behaviours of the generated program. We discuss how to use these state diagrams to analyse the specification for errors, and how to produce correct abstractions to show a particular class of properties of a system. This approach proves successful and scalable for specific domains of application such as database systems and e-commerce websites.