Build Finite State Machine Model

The behavior of each FTM object is defined in a finite state machine (FSM) using Rational® Software Architect.

FTM extends the Rational tooling to support FTM development using a number of plug-ins. These plug-ins extend the Rational toolkit to support additional FTM UML properties (stereotypes) and also include an extractor, which can extract the FSM model in the form of a SQL script that can be used to deploy the model at runtime.

Each FSM model consists of a number of FSMs, each of which describes the behavior of an FTM object or a class of FTM objects, definitions for the events used in the model, and references to the actions called.

Each state machine consists of a number of states, state transitions, and constraints. The general layout of the state machine is derived from the object lifecycle diagrams, with further detail such as actions, event guards, and object filters, added to the state transitions.

Once developed, the FSM model is extracted as a SQL script for deployment to an FTM database, where it controls the behavior of the developed application at runtime.

For more information on developing FSM models and using the Rational tools, see Application analysis and design tutorial.