Generating alternative representations for OCL integrity constraints

Integrity constraints (ICs) play a key role in the definition of conceptual schemas. In the UML, ICs are usually specified as invariants written in the OCL language. However, due to the high expressiveness of the OCL, the designer has different syntactic alternatives to express each IC. In the conte...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Cabot, Jordi, Teniente López, Ernest|||0000-0001-8890-9638
Tipo de recurso: informe técnico
Fecha de publicación:2005
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/84189
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/84189
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Integrity constraints
Conceptual schemas
UML
OCL
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Sistemes d'informació
Descripción
Sumario:Integrity constraints (ICs) play a key role in the definition of conceptual schemas. In the UML, ICs are usually specified as invariants written in the OCL language. However, due to the high expressiveness of the OCL, the designer has different syntactic alternatives to express each IC. In the context of the MDA, the choice of a particular definition has a direct effect on the efficiency of the automatically generated implementation. The method presented in this paper assists the designer during the definition of ICs by means of generating equivalent alternatives for the initially defined constraints. Our method can also be applied to help in the detection of equivalent (redundant) constraints and as a tool to facilitate the learning of the OCL.