The Pragmatics of STAIRS

Abstract. STAIRS is a method for the compositional development of interactions in the setting of UML 2.0. In addition to defining deno-tational trace semantics for the main aspects of interactions, STAIRS focuses on how interactions may be developed through successive re-finement steps. In this tutorial paper, we concentrate on explaining the practical relevance of STAIRS. Guidelines are given on how to create interactions using the different STAIRS operators, and how these may be refined. The pragmatics is illustrated by a running example.