Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual, The, Second Edition

run-to-completion

A transition or series of actions that must be completed in its entirety.

See also action, state machine, transition.

Semantics

A state machine conceptually undergoes a series of discrete steps over time in which it handles one occurrence at a time from a pool of events recognized by the object that owns the state machine. Occurrences of events recognized by the object are placed into the event pool. In general, the event occurrences in the pool are unordered, although profiles are free to define execution environments with various ordering or priority rules. During each step, the state machine selects an event from the pool (in the general case, nondeterministically) and then carries out the consequences of handling that event. ...