2.3 Toward a common language to express semantics

To cope with the problem that UML lacks a rigorous semantics, the OMG (Object Management Group) issued an RFP (request for proposal) for such a semantics for the UML. The Action Semantics Consortium responded to this RFP and suggested new constructs to the UML.

Action semantics, as discussed above, is good at rigorously defining semantic concerns of programming languages. It must be clarified that by combining action semantics with UML, we can get a rigorously defined modelling language and also a rigorously defined meta-modelling language. Models designed with such a rigorous semantics can then be simulated, analyzed and verified at an early time.

Based on the industrial practice such as SDL, Kennedy Carter and BridgePoint, the Action Semantics proposal aims at providing modelers with a complete, software-independent specification for actions in their models [SGJ02]. As a future OMG standard, action semantics goes one step further than its predecessors.