 | Glossary |
A
- active state
The active state is the state or state configuration in which the state machine is.
C
- composite state
- concurrent state
- Conflicting transitions
Transition are said to be in conflict, if more than one transition is enabled during dispatch of an event. Rules to solve the conflict are:
If they are in a hierarchical relationship, the outermost transition has precendence over the others.
If they emanate from the same state, there is a priority number that defines the precedence.
If they are part of orthogonal sub-regions, all will be executed according to the sub-region execution order.
E
- Enabled transition
A transition is said to be enabled during dispatch of an event if (1) the transitions source state configuration matches the state machine active state configuration, if (2) the current trigger event matches the transitions signal event and if (3) the guard condition is true. Multiple transitions may be enabled during a dispatch which is called conflicting transitions.
H
- hierarchical state
Hierarchical states are states that have at least one nested region with sub-states.
- history state
A sub-region may be configured to remember the state that is active when the region is left. This state will be re-entered when the region is entered again without a specified state.
I
- initial state
Every region has one initial state that is entered when the region is entered without a specified state. This is the case for the root region when the state machine is started. Sub-regions are entered without a specified state when a transition is executed that ends at the outer border of the embedding composite state. The history state, if configured, replaces the initial state on second entry of the region.
L
- least common ancestor of a transition
The least common ancestor is the smallest region that contains both the transition anchor state and the transition target. When a transition is executed, it leaves (nested) states up to the state that is a direct child of the least common ancestor region and enters (nested) states starting from the child state of the least common ancestor region.
O
- orthogonal state
Orthogonal states are states which are active at the same time within a single state machine. Orthogonal states are part of separate sibling regions. They are said to be orthogonal because the other states within the respective regions can be varied independently and thus span orthogonal state spaces.
R
- Reached transition
A transition is said to be reached when the the transitions source state configuration matches the state machine active state configuration. The transition will be evaluated on the next dispatch of an event.
- region
Every state of a state machine is contained in a region. For a plain state machine with only simple states there is one root region that contains all the states. States of a hierarchical state machine contain one or more sub-regions that again contain states, which are called sub-states. Every region requires an initial state that indicates which state to enter when the region becomes active, for the root region this is the state machine startup. Nesting regions within states allows to create an arbitrary deep nested state machine. For details about the behavior of the state machine please see Programming State Machines.
- root region
The root region is the topmost container for the states of a state machine and is needed for every state machine.
S
- state configuration
A state configuration describes the active state of a state machine, the source of a transition or the target of a transition. A state configuration can uniquely specify a single state (e.g. the active state of a state machine) or it can leave some degree of freedom through not specifying the states of one or more orthogonal sub-regions.
- sub-state
A state nested within a sub-region of a composite state.
T
- Transition
- transtion anchor
Transitions are aggregated at states. The transition anchor defines at which state a transition is aggregated. For plain transitions the transition anchor is identical with the transition source state. Complex transitions like join transitions have a transition anchor that is (typically) the common parent state of the source states. The transition anchor state is also the starting point for identifying the least common ancestor of the transition.
In some specific situations one or more source states may also be outside the closure of the transition anchor. The outside states are not left when the transition executes, however they still participate as a precondition for the transition to become enabled (state gated transition).