Are there any tools to help the user to design a State Machine to be consumed by my application?

Question

When reading this question I remembered there was something I have been researching for a while now and I though Stackoverflow could be of help.

I have created a framework that handles applications as state machines. Currently all the state business logic and transactions are handled via Java code.

I was looking for some UI implementation that would allow the user to draw the state machines and transactions and generate a file that can later on be consumed by my framework to "run" the workflow according to one or more defined state machines.

Ideally I would like to use an open standard like SCXML. The goal as the UI would be to have something like this plugin IBM have for Rational Software Architect:

IBM SCXML Editor - 1 http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/awss.nsf/screenshots/16947DF3AB2F02C38825729800576322/$FILE/scxml-02.jpg

IBM SCXML Editor - 2 http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/awss.nsf/screenshots/E57259478C5E79ED882572980057B991/$FILE/scxml-04.jpg

Do you know any editor, plugin or library that would have something similar or at least serve as a good starting point?

Answer 1

There are plenty of tools out there that allow the user to edit state machines. For example, if you could accept UML state machines, and UML editor capable exporting XMI could be used. If you are looking for a free tool, try ArgoUML or Eclipse.

To convert XMI to SCXML, you could then use IBM SCXML.

Another SCXML editor is Commons SCXML.

Answer 2

Check out this free Java app: scxmlgui It is an attempt to build a graphical user interface for editing SCXML finite state machines.

You may also find this article very useful.

Easy Finite State Machine Implementation with Apache Commons SCXML

Answer 3

I cannot be sure you can use it for this specific task, but take a look at ragel.