author : Michal Politi

This guide first describes the dominant Statecharts, which are used to describe system behavior, and then explores the hierarchical language of Activity-charts, which describe the system’s activities and the data that flows between them. It then shows how to use these two synergistic languages to develop a conceptual model of the system, which can then be combined with a physical or structural model using the third language of Module-charts.

These languages and the subsequent Statemate toolset constitute a breakthrough approach in requirements analysis, specification, and high-level design. They also provide a powerful method for inspecting, testing, and analyzing models.

Author David Harel invented Statecharts, and he and coauthor Michal Politi co-developed the other two languages in the set. Ms. Politi also headed the Statemate development team for more than a decade. Their work has earned them the Most Influential Paper Award from the International Conference on Software Engineering, and Harel’s work on the language of Statecharts has won him the Stevens Award in Software Development Methods in 1996 and the first Israel Prime Minister’s Prize for Software in 1997. No authors are more highly qualified to describe the syntax and semantics of these intricate languages precisely and rigorously—and with extensive examples based on a model early warning system. No book provides better guidance than Modeling Reactive Systems with Statecharts.