Advanced Behavioral Modeling

State Machines in an hour

Bruce Powel Douglass, Ph.D.

Chief Evangelist, Global Technology Ambassador
IBM IoT
[email protected]
Twitter: @IronmanBruce
www.bruce-douglass.com

© Bruce Powel Douglass, 2019 1

 “If I hear, I forget.
If I see, I remember.
If I do, I understand.”
- Confucius

Law of Douglass #35

© Bruce Powel Douglass, 2019 2

 State machines

A state is a distinguishable, disjoint,

orthogonal condition of existence
of an object that persists for a
significant period of time

A transition is a response
to an event of interest moving
the object from a state
to a state.

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 State Machines

An action is a run-to-completion
behavior. The object will not accept
or process any new events until
the actions associated with the
current event are complete.

Order of action execution

(1) exit actions of current state
(2) transition actions
(3) entry actions of next state

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 Basic Statechart Syntax

State name
Event name Guard Action list

Entry action

Exit action

Internal Transitions
(“Reactions in state”)
State

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 Statechart Syntax – OR States

• An object must always be in exactly one OR-state at a given level

of abstraction.

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 A Simple FSM

• You are implementing a reliable transmission service for an OSI-

compliant protocol stack.
• A message is sent that requires the receiver to return an ACK.
• If an ACK does not occur, retransmit the message
• If the message is transmitted 5 times without an ACK, then inform
the sender.

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 Where’s the State Machine?

• Create a state machine to

reliably deliver a message
over a communication
protocol
1. Create the class model
2. Identify the reactive
(State-owning) class
3. Write the state machine

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 Message Transaction FSM
This “default pseudostate”
identifies which state is entered
to start (REQUIRED)
This “condition pseudostate”
uses guards to select which
outgoing transition will be taken

This “terminal
pseudostate”
identifies that the
state machine no
longer receives and
processes events
(OPTIONAL)

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 Types of Events

• UML defines 4 kinds of events

– Signal Event
• Asynchronous signal received e.g. evStart
• Requires queuing
– Call Event
• Operation call received e.g. opCall(a,b,c)
• Implementation “body” is shown on the action list of the transition
– Change Event
• Change in value occurred
– Time Event
• Absolute time arrived
• Relative time elapsed e.g. tm(PulseWidthTime)
– Are Classifiers and so can be generalized and
specialized

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 Timeout Events

• What happens if the

object receives the
stopPolling event when in
the Delay state?
• Will the system always
print
tick tock
as long as it is in the
Polling state?

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 Timeout Events

• Let’s see …

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 Statechart Syntax – Nested States

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 Order of Nested Actions

doExitStuff();
doTransitionIntoStuff();
doOuterStuffOnEntry();
doMiddleStuffOnEntry();
doInnerEntryStuff();

doInnerExitStuff();
doMiddleStuffOnExit();
• Execute from outermost - in on entry doOuterStuffOnExit();
• Execute from innermost - out on exit doTransitionOutOffStuff();
doEntryStuff();

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 Statechart Syntax – AND States
for simultaneously true conditions

Each region
must have its
own default

This transition
leaves all
nested and-
states

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 And-States Notes

• FSMs can always be represented without using And-states

– It requires the development of the “cross product of the state spaces”
Without And-States

With And-States

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 State explosion – up close and personal

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 UML Pseudostates

Symbol Symbol Name Symbol Symbol Name

Branch Pseudostate (type H (Shallow) History Pseudostate

C or
of junction pseudostate)

H* (Deep) History Pseudostate

T or Terminal or Final Pseudostate

Initial or Default Pseudostate

Fork Pseudostate Junction Pseudostate

Merge Junction Pseudostate

Join Pseudostate
(type of junction pseudostate)

[g] Entry Point Pseudostate

Choice Point Pseudostate label

[g] Exit Point Pseudostate

label

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 Statechart Syntax – Pseudostates

History
Join

Conditional

Fork

Default
Termination Diagram
© Bruce Powel Douglass, 2019 (Final state) (must be a pair)
19
 History: Deep and Shallow

e6 Deep (all levels

below)

e10

e9
e7

e8
e1

e2
e5 e3 e4

Shallow
(only 1
level)

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 Submachines - Parent

Entry
Connector

Navigate
to Child

Exit
Connector
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 Submachines - Child

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 Poorly-Formed Statecharts
Law of Douglass 55: Any language rich enough to say something
useful, is rich enough to say something stupid. Don’t say stupid things.
Race
Must be same
condition
event

No Defaults

Conflicting
Transitions

Likely run-to-
completion
violation
Longer timeout
will never fire Overlapping
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 Did I mention you can view states in state
tables too?

• The most common form of a state table is state x transition

• Strength
– Explicitly showing missing transitions (for checking completeness)
• Weakness
– Can’t easily show actions

Composite-states

And-states

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 Debugging State Machines:
There are levels of sophistication

1. There’s always the printf approach to debugging

– Add cout or printf statements to actions on state machine
2. Animation of state machines adds the ability to
interactively insert events, change values, and observe
state behavior
3. You can use more advanced tools like Webify or Panel
diagrams to construct user views to drive and observe
the state machine
4. Can use the UML Testing Profile (such as with Test
Conductor) to automate testing of state machines

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 Example: Gas Mixer Use Case

• In this case, we constructed a state machine of a patient

ventilator system use case named Mix Gases. This state
machine models the requirements. (and not the design)
of the use case.
– These include the range of acceptable gases, flow rates, and
concentrations (e.g. can not be “hypoxic” (< 21% O2))
• We created a representations of the actors (as blocks)
with state behavior to “drive” the use case state
machine
• We will add panel diagram elements to one of the actor
blocks to make it easy to drive and observe the behavior
• We will capture the interactions as “animated sequence
diagrams” which will later serve as specification for
system verification test cases
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 Gas Mixer Use Case Execution Context

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 Gas Mixer Use Case Block State Machine

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 Gas Mixer Use Case Block State Submachines

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 Physician Actor State Machine

Text controls to see

or change flow values

Panel
buttons to
send
events

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 Testing the model

Physician actions Physician actions

1. Select the O2 gas 7. Select the He gas
2. Set the flow to 20000 l/min 8. Set the flow to 5000 l/min
3. Push the Set O2 flow button 9. Push the Set H2 Flow button
4. Select the N2 gas 10. Enable mixing
5. Set the flow to 10,000 l/min System determines mixture is not hypoxic
6. Push the Set N2 Flow button and with valid ranges and so starts
© Bruce Powel Douglass, 2019
delivering. 31
 Output (Animated Sequence Diagram)

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 Putting it all Together

Sequence diagrams: State diagrams:

• Good to show discrete • Good for discrete modal

interactions among sets of behavior
elements • Applies to a single classifier

Timing Diagrams:
• Good for showing the change
of value or state over time

Flowcharts:
• Good for single-threaded
Activity diagrams: algorithmic flow especially for
operations
• Good for algorithmic flow and
continuous flows (SysML)
• Uses token flow semantics
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 Want to know more?

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