XAL is suitable for designing state-based application (such as worflow management, bussiness management and process management application).

The application design takes place in five phases:

1. definition of the states which describe the application
2. definition of the transitions between states and, if necessary, related temporal constraints specificatio
3. writing pieces of code which describe states behavior (action functions)
4. writing pieces of code which are related to metric functions
5. each metric function/action functions is bound to a specific state