Authors:
José Farinha
and
Pedro Ramos
Affiliation:
ISCTE-IUL, Portugal
Keyword(s):
UML, Templates, Verification, Computability.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applications and Software Development
;
General-Purpose Modeling Languages and Standards
;
Generative Programming
;
Languages, Tools and Architectures
;
MetaModeling
;
Model-Driven Software Development
;
Models
;
Paradigm Trends
;
Software Engineering
;
Syntax and Semantics of Modeling Languages
Abstract:
UML templates allow the specification of generic model elements that can be reproduced in domain models
by means of the Bind relationship. Binding to a template encompasses the substitution of that template’s
parameters by compatible domain elements. The requirement of compatibility, however, is checked over by
UML in a very permissive way. As a consequence, binding to a template can result in badly-formed models
and non-computable expressions. Such option in the design of UML was certainly intentional and meant to
allow for richer semantics for the Bind relationship, as the specialization of the concept is advised at several
points of the standard. This paper proposes one such specialization. One that guarantees well-formedness
and computability for elements bound to a template. This is achieved by introducing the concept of
Functional Conformance, which is imposed between every template’s parameter and its application domain
substitute. Functional conformance is defined in terms of
well-formedness rules, expressed as OCL
constraints on top of OMG’s UML metamodel.
(More)