UML class diagrams supporting formalism definition in the Draw-Net Modeling System

The Draw-Net Modeling System (DMS) is a customizable framework supporting the design and the solution of models expressed in any graph-based formalism, thanks to an open architecture. During the years, many formalisms (Petri Nets, Bayesian Networks, Fault Trees, etc.) have been included in DMS. A formalism defines all the primitives that can be used in a model (nodes, arcs, properties, etc.) and is stored into XML files. The paper describes a new way to manage formalisms: the user can create a new formalism by drawing a UML Class Diagrams (CD); then the corresponding XML files are automatically generated. If instead the user intends to edit an existing formalism, a "reverse engineering" function generates the CD from the XML files. The CD can be handled inside DMS, and acts an intuitive and graphical "meta-model" to represent the formalism. An application example is presented.