UML diagrams describe different views of one piece of software. These diagrams strongly depend on each other and must therefore be consistent with one another, since inconsistencies between diagrams may be a source of faults during software development activities that rely on these diagrams. It is therefore paramount that consistency rules be defined and that inconsistencies be detected, analyzed and fixed. The relevant literature shows that authors typically define their own UML consistency rules, sometimes defining the same rules and sometimes defining rules that are already in the UML standard. The reason might be that no consolidated set of rules that are deemed relevant by authors can be found to date. The aim of our research is to provide a consolidated set of UML consistency rules and obtain a detailed overview of the current research in this area. We therefore followed a systematic procedure in order to collect and analyze UML consistency rules. We then consolidated a set of 116 UML consistency rules (avoiding redundant definitions or definitions already in the UML standard) that can be used as an important reference for UML-based software development activities, for teaching UML-based software development, and for further research.

This paper presents the Pattern Modeling Framework (PMF), a new metamodeling approach to pattern specification for MOF-compliant modeling frameworks and languages. Patterns need to be precisely specified before a tool can manipulate them, and though several approaches to pattern specification have been proposed, they do not provide the scalability and flexibility required in practice. PMF provides a pattern specification language called Epattern, which is capable of precisely specifying patterns in MOF-compliant metamodels. The language is defined as an extension to MOF by adding semantics inspired from the UML composite structure diagram. The language also comes with a graphical notation and a recommended iterative specification process. It also contains features to manage the complexity of specifying patterns and simplify their application and detection in user models. Most importantly, the language is implemented using state-of-the-art technologies that are heavily used by major modeling tool vendors, thus facilitating its adoption.

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SysML is a modeling language used for systems analysis and design. While some domain‐specific analyses (e.g., finite element analysis) can only be specified in SysML when combined with other vocabulary, many common analyses can be modeled purely in SysML using its parametric and behavioral semantics. In this paper, we focus on one kind of analysis, which is requirements verification, and propose a new Executable System Engineering Method (ESEM) that automates it using executable SysML modeling patterns that involve structural, behavioral and parametric diagrams. The resulting analysis model becomes executable using a general purpose SysML execution engine. We present our method and demonstrate it on a running example derived from an industrial case study where we have verified the power requirements of a telescope system. It involves dynamic power roll‐ups in different operational scenarios and shows the automation capabilities of this method.

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A design pattern is a recurring and well-understood design fragment. In a model-driven engineering methodology, detecting occurrences of design patterns supports the activities of model comprehension and maintenance. With the recent explosion of domain-specific modeling languages, each with its own syntax and semantics, there has been a corresponding explosion in approaches to detecting design patterns that are so much tailored to those many languages that they are difficult to reuse. This makes developing generic analysis tools extremely hard. Such a generic tool is however desirable to reduce the learning curve for pattern designers as they specify patterns for different languages used to model different aspects of a system. In this paper, we propose a unified approach to detecting design patterns of MOF-based modeling languages. MOF is increasingly used to define modeling languages, including UML and BPMN. In our approach, a pattern is modeled with a Visual Pattern Modeling Language and mapped to a corresponding QVTRelations transformation. Such a transformation runs over an input model where pattern occurrences are to be detected and Communicated by Dr. Ana Moreira. M. Elaasar (B)Rational Software, Ottawa Lab, reports those occurrences in a result model. The approach is prototyped on Eclipse and validated in two large case studies that involve detecting design patterns-specifically a subset of GoF patterns in a UML model and a subset of Control Flow patterns in a BPMN model. Results show that the approach is adequate for modeling complex design patterns for MOFbased modeling languages and detecting their occurrences with high accuracy and performance.