Unit 2

Event and Signals ,Process and Threads

Events
• An event is the specification of a significant occurrence that has a
location in time and space.
• Anything that happens is modeled as an event in UML.
• In the context of state machines, an event is an occurrence of a
stimulus that can trigger a state transition.
• Four kinds of events – signals, calls, the passing of time, and a change
in state.
• Events may be external or internal and asynchronous or synchronous.

Fig. Events
Cont..
• Asynchronous events are events that can happen at arbitrary times
eg:- signal, the passing of time, and a change of state.
• Synchronous events, represents the invocation of an operation eg:-
Calls
• External events are those that pass between the system and its
actors.
• Internal events are those that pass among the objects that live inside
the system.
• A signal is an event that represents the specification of an
asynchronous stimulus communicated between instances.
Kinds of Events
• Signal Events
• Call Events
• Time and Change Events
• Sending and Receiving Events
Signal Event

• A signal event represents a named object that is dispatched (thrown)

asynchronously by one object and then received (caught) by another.
Exceptions are an example of internal signal.
• A signal event is an asynchronous event.
• Signal events may have instances, generalization relationships,
attributes and operations. Attributes of a signal serve as its
parameters.
Cont..
• A signal event may be sent as the action of a state transition in a state
machine or the sending of a message in an interaction
• Signals are modeled as stereotyped classes and the relationship
between an operation and the events by using a dependency
relationship, stereotyped as send
Call Events
• A call event represents the dispatch of an operation.
• A call event is a synchronous event
Time and Change Events
• A time event is an event that represents the passage of time.Modeled
by using the keyword ‘after’ followed by some expression that
evaluates to a period of time which can be simple or complex.
• A change event is an event that represents a change in state or the
satisfaction of some condition. Modeled by using the keyword ‘when’
followed by some Boolean expression
Sending or Receiving Signals
• For synchronous events (Sending or Receiving) like call event, the sender
and the receiver are in a rendezvous (the sender dispatches the signal and
wait for a response from the receiver) for the duration of the operation.
When an object calls an operation, the sender dispatches the operation
and then waits for the receiver.
• For asynchronous events (Sending or Receiving) like signal event, the
sender and receiver do not rendezvous ie,the sender dispatches the signal
but does not wait for a response from the receiver. When an object sends a
signal, the sender dispatches the signal and then continues along its flow of
control, not waiting for any return from the receiver.
• Call events can be modeled as operations on the class of the object.
• Named signals can be modeled by naming them in an extra compartment
of the class
Cont…
State Machine
• A state machine is a behavior that specifies the sequences of states
an object goes through during its lifetime in response to events.
• raphically, a state is rendered as a rectangle with rounded corners. A
transition is rendered as a solid directed line.
• State machines are used to specify the behavior of objects that must
respond to asynchronous stimulus or whose current behavior
depends on their past.
• State machines are used to model the behavior of entire systems,
especially reactive systems, which must respond to signals from
actors outside the system.
States
• A state is a condition or situation during the life of an object during
which it satisfies some condition, performs some activity, or waits for
some event.
• An object remains in a state for a finite amount of time. For example,
a Heater in a home might be in any of four states: Idle, Activating,
Active, and Shutting Down.
• A state name must be unique within its enclosing state.
• A state has five parts: Name, Entry/exit actions, Internal transitions –
Transitions that are handled without causing a change in state.
• Substates – nested structure of a state, involving disjoint (sequentially
active) or concurrent (concurrently active) substates.
• Deferred events – A list of events that are not handled in that state
but, rather, are postponed and queued for handling by the object in
another state.
• Initial state indicates the default starting place for the state machine
or substate and is represented as a filled black circle.
• Final state indicates that the execution of the state machine or the
enclosing state has been completed and is represented as a filled
black circle surrounded by an unfilled circle.
• Initial and final states are pseudo-states
Transitions
• A transition is a relationship between two states indicating that an object in
the first state will perform certain actions and enter the second state when
a specified event occurs and specified conditions are satisfied.
• Transition fires means change of state occurs. Until transition fires, the
object is in the source state; after it fires, it is said to be in the target state.
• A transition has five parts:
• Source state – The state affected by the transition.
• Event trigger – a stimulus that can trigger a source state to fire on satisfying guard
condition.
• Guard condition – Boolean expression that is evaluated when the transition is
triggered by the reception of the event trigger.
• Action – An executable atomic computation that may directly act on the object that
owns the state machine, and indirectly on other objects that are visible to the object.
• Target state – The state that is active after the completion of the transition
Cont..

• A transition may have multiple sources as well as multiple targets.

• A self-transition is a transition whose source and target states are the
same
Event Trigger
• An event in the context of state machines is an occurrence of a
stimulus that can trigger a state transition.
• Events may include signals, calls, the passing of time, or a change in
state.
• An event – signal or a call – may have parameters whose values are
available to the transition, including expressions for the guard
condition and action.
• An event trigger may be polymorphic
Guard Condition
• A guard condition is rendered as a Boolean expression enclosed in
square brackets and placed after the trigger event.
• A guard condition is evaluated only after the trigger event for its
transition occurs.
• A guard condition is evaluated just once for each transition at the
time the event occurs, but it may be evaluated again if the transition
is retriggered.
Action
• An action is an executable atomic computation i.e, it cannot be
interrupted by an event and runs to completion.
• Actions may include operation calls, the creation or destruction of
another object, or the sending of a signal to an object.
• An activity may be interrupted by other events.
Advanced States and Transitions
• Entry Actions are those actions that are to be done upon entry of a state and
are shown by the keyword event ‘entry’ with an appropriate action.
• Exit Actions are those actions that are to be done upon exit from a state
marked by the keyword event ‘exit’, together with an appropriate action
• Internal Transitions are events that should be handled internally without
leaving the state.
• Internal transitions may have events with parameters and guard conditions.
• Activities make use of object’s idle time when inside a state. ‘do’ transition
is used to specify the work that’s to be done inside a state after the entry
action is dispatched.
Deferred event
• A deferred event is a list of events whose occurrence in the state is
postponed until a state in which the listed events are not deferred
becomes active, at which time they occur and may trigger transitions
as if they had just occurred. A deferred event is specified by listing the
event with the special action ‘defer’.
Substates
• A substate is a state that’s nested inside another one.
• A state that has substates is called a composite state.
• A composite state may contain either concurrent (orthogonal) or
sequential (disjoint) sub states.
• Substates may be nested to any level
Sequential Substates
• Sequential Substates are those sub states in which an event common
to the composite states can easily be exercised by each states inside it
at any time.
• Sequential substates partition the state space of the composite state
into disjoint states.
• A nested sequential state machine may have at most one initial state
and one final state
History States
• A history state allows composite state that contains sequential substates to
remember the last substate that was active in it prior to the transition from
the composite state.
• a shallow history state is represented as a small circle containing the
symbol H.
• The first time entry to a composite state doesn’t have any history.
• the symbol H designates a shallow history, which remembers only the
history of the immediate nested state machine.
• the symbol H* designates deep history, which remembers down to the
innermost nested state at any depth.
• When only one level of nesting, shallow and deep history states are
semantically equivalent.
Concurrent SUbstate
• concurrent substates specify two or more state machines that
execute in parallel in the context of the enclosing object.
• Execution of these concurrent substates continues in parallel. These
substates waits for each other to finish to joins back into one flow.
• A nested concurrent state machine does not have an initial, final, or
history state