DESIGNER INFORMATION

The following discussion assumes a thorough reading of Yong Xiang Zeng’s thesis, entitled “Transforming UCMs to the CSM representation”. As described in Zeng’s thesis, the implicit design may be divided into 3 stages [1]:

• Create a duplicate map;
• Transform the above map by inserting new RA/RR nodes, Dummy Steps and by eliminating adjacent Empty Points;
• Save the transformed map in the appropriate XML representation.

Implementing a duplicate map

Our duplicate map is implemented under the form of two lists. The first list contains a series of node references to the original UCM nodes [2]. The second list contains a series of node connections, emulating the connections between the nodes in the original map [2]. Populating these two lists with elements from the original map was an easy task. All one had to do was to traverse the map and retrieve the appropriate nodes and connections and then add them to the list. The real problem intervened when it came time to make the appropriate RA and RR insertions.

Creating and Inserting RA and RR nodes

One of the key elements of our design was to distinguish between the original UCM nodes and the new RA, RR, Dummy Sequence and Dummy Step nodes. Without such a distinction, we would not be able to differentiate between the original nodes and the newly inserted ones. Thus, we created the CSMDup Node? class. An instance of this class can be either an original UCM node (i.e., a Path Node?), or a newly created node (we will call it simply CSMDup Node?).

Thus, our list of nodes is populated with CSMDup Nodes?. The list of connections may have up to four different types of entries. Assuming that a connection is formed of a source node being linked to a target node, the different entries are:

• CSMDup Node? <--> Path Node?
• Path Node? <--> CSMDup Node?
• CSMDup Node? <--> CSMDup Node?
• Path Node? <--> Path Node? (original connection as in the UCM)

The insertion process is defined by the execution of two algorithms: Resource Acquisition and Resource Release. These algorithms are described in detail in Zeng’s thesis and need no further elaboration in this report. Our implementation follows the same logic as described in the thesis.

When the time comes to create a new node there are several things to take into consideration. First, we have to assign a unique ID to each of these nodes. Under the current implementation, all new nodes have IDs starting with the letter “G” for “generated”. RA nodes can be assigned an ID starting at G100 and ending at G199. Dummy sequences which are inserted after the RA node, have IDs that start at G200 up to G299. RR nodes start at G300 and end at G399. Dummy Sequences that are inserted prior to RR nodes start at G400 and end at G499. Finally, all Dummy Steps start at G500. Unfortunately, this naming convention is rather primitive and does not allow more than 99 insertions of each type of new node.

When we insert a new node, we also have to update the links in the connections list to accommodate these insertions. Therefore, the typical insertion would delete an existing connection linking two Path Nodes? and create two new connections: from the original source node to the node to be inserted, and from the node to be inserted to the original target node. Once these links have been updated, we are able to obtain our predecessor/successor attributes.

As described in the thesis, consecutive empty points are not allowed in a map. If two or more consecutive empty points are found, all but one of them must be deleted. To accomplish this, we follow a similar process as with RA/RR insertions. We first identify a connection linking two Empty Points. We then delete the target node and all subsequent target nodes that are Empty Points. At each iteration, we re-establish the links in the connections list.

A similar algorithm is used to insert a Dummy step between two Path Connections? or between two Steps. Our algorithm searches for an empty point. If that empty point is located between two Path Connections?, it is replaced with a Dummy Step. Otherwise, it may be either deleted (if it is found in between a Step and a Path Connection?), or kept (if it is found between two Steps).

Printing the final XML file

Once all the insertions and deletions are done, we can finally generate the CSM file. To do so, we simply scan the node list and print out every node that we encounter, be it a Path Node? or a newly inserted node.

-- Yuliya Khomich? - 14 Apr 2006