Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual, The, Second Edition

active state configuration

The set of states that are active at one time within a state machine. The firing of a transition changes a few states in the set; the others remain unchanged.

See active, complex transition, state machine.

Semantics

In general, a system can have multiple active states concurrently. The entire set of active states is called the active state configuration. The transition firing rules of state machines define which states must be active for a transition to fire and what changes occur to the active state configuration as a result of a transition firing.

A state machine is a tree of states. If a composite state is active, exactly one direct substate in each of its regions must be active. If a submachine state is active, ...