UML and OCL

We leveraged our laws proposed for Alloy to UML/OCL. In order to do that, we proposed a semantics for UML Class Diagrams using Alloy as the semantics model. As a result, we proposed a tool that analyzes a UML class diagram similarly to Alloy Analyzer. We regard as a future work to implement this tool, and make it available for tools such as Rational Rose.

• OCL Specification 1.5
  

This document presents the Object Constraint Language (OCL) as part of the UML specification document. The OCL spec includes syntax description (along with a BNF grammar) and informal semantics for most of the constructs. Some highlighted features are confirmed in this document, showing OCL's lack of semantic basis: undefined expressions, lack of uniformity (. and ->, one or two dots a.b anf a.b.c), allInstances making constraints global. In addition, compared to Alloy, OCL is not as concise and simple for constraints stating equivalent properties.

• Class and capsule refinement in UML for real time
  

This paper proposes laws for top level design elements of UML-RT (Real Time). Our laws do not deal with refinements, as theirs. Moreover, their work does not intend to propose basic laws, as ours. They propose laws not only for structural constructs, as our laws, but also laws for behavioural constructs, such as laws for capsules. They assume that relationships are directed and predicates involve only relationships as attributes, as in ROOL. Additionally, the authors consider implementation-oriented models. Moreover, their proposed laws rely on the absence of global constraints on the model, such as those involving cardinality (number of instances) of classes in the entire system. Our laws also work for models containing global constraints.

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