SELECTION OF A COMPUTATIONAL PROCESS MODELING TOOL FOR IMPROVING SOFTWARE QUALITY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/tnv-tech.2023.4.9Keywords:
software product, state machine model, FA technology, SWITCH technology, Petri net, Unified Modeling Language, review, analysis, selection criterion, expressive power, process modeling language, algorithmization, computational process, trial and error method, program debugging, insertion sortAbstract
A pressing problem in the IT sector is obtaining software products of proper quality. Software modeling tools play an important role in solving this problem. The most widespread tools are the following: technologies for designing software products based on automated models built on finite state machines (FSMs), Petri nets, and the unified modeling language (UML). The aim of this paper is to improve the quality of software by applying the best of these tools at an early stage of software design. The paper reviews and analyzes modern means (approaches, methods and tools) for modeling software with the aim of improving its quality, analyzing 30 sources over the past 25 years. It is shown that over the years, the scope of applications of these tools has expanded, but nothing new has emerged in theoretical terms. The above-mentioned tools are compared with each other by the criterion of the greatest expressive power of the language describing the modeling process. It is shown that Petri nets (PNs) have the greatest expressive power. At the same time, we propose to use PNNs at the beginning of the design of the software, i.e., at the stage of algorithmization (development of the computational process). This avoids many errors that can be eliminated at the stage of program debugging only by trial and error, which greatly lengthens the debugging process. To demonstrate the capabilities of the tools under consideration, each of them builds its own model of the same insertion sorting process.
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