The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is accepted today as an important standard for developing software. UML tools however provide little support for validating and checking models in early development phases. There is also no substantial support for the Object Constraint Language (OCL). We present an approach for the validation of UML models and OCL constraints based on animation and certification. The USE tool (UML-based Specification Environment) supports analysts, designers and developers in executing UML models and checking OCL constraints and thus enables them to employ model-driven techniques for software production.
We study the testing and certification of UML and OCL models as supported by the validation tool USE. We extend the available USE features by introducing a language for defining properties of desired snapshots and by showing how such snapshots are generated. Within the approach, it is possible to treat test cases and validation cases. Test cases show that snapshots having desired properties can be constructed. Validation cases show that given properties are consequences of the original UML and OCL model.
Abstract. In model-driven engineering, models constitute pivotal elements of the software to be built. If models are specified well, transformations can be employed for different purposes, e.g., to produce final code. However, it is important that models produced by a transformation from valid input models are valid, too, where validity refers to the metamodel constraints, often written in OCL. Transformation models are a way to describe this Hoare-style notion of partial correctness of model transformations using only metamodels and constraints. In this paper, we provide an automatic translation of declarative, rule-based ATL transformations into such transformation models, providing an intuitive and versatile encoding of ATL into OCL that can be used for the analysis of various properties of transformations. We furthermore show how existing model verifiers (satisfiability checkers) for OCL-annotated metamodels can be applied for the verification of the translated ATL transformations, providing evidence for the effectiveness of our approach in practice.
Abstract-Nowadays, modeling languages like UML are essential in the design of complex software systems and also start to enter the domain of hardware and hardware/software codesign. Due to shortening time-to-market demands, "first time right" requirements have thereby to be satisfied. In this paper, we propose an approach that makes use of Boolean satisfiability for verifying UML/OCL models. We describe how the respective components of a verification problem, namely system states of a UML model, OCL constraints, and the actual verification task, can be encoded and afterwards automatically solved using an offthe-shelf SAT solver. Experiments show that our approach can solve verification tasks significantly faster than previous methods while still supporting a large variety of UML/OCL constructs.
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