Bridging of complex data structures between xtUML domains

Abstract: Executable and Translatable UML (xtUML) is a high level software development method where models are developed using UML diagrams and action language code. Model compilers can translate a model into another programming language which is then executable. When developing xtUML models one of the main benefits is that the documentation of the program is created at the same time as the program in the shape of UML diagrams. It is therefore also important that it is possible to create good UML diagrams that gives the reader a good and clear understanding of how the program works without having to look at the code. One problem is the use of arrays and structured data types in the models because they can make a model more difficult to understand and therefore it would be good to be able to refrain from using them and instead model arrays and structured data types as classes with relations between them. This becomes an issue when an array should be sent to another domain in the system because a lot of action language code must be written which is inconvenient. A solution to this problem would be to send class object instances directly to other domains. In this thesis a solution to the problem has been proposed along with alternate options of solving it. The proposed solution has also been implemented in an existing model compiler and the results show that the performance in compilation time is slower compared to when using the built-in arrays and structured data types, but faster or the same compared to letting the user write its own code for sending object instances. The execution time for a small model using the new solution has increased by a lot compared to using arrays and structured data types, and the size of the executable file has almost doubled but if bigger models are created this difference may become negligible.