Extending variability for OCL interpretation

Abstract

In recent years, OCL advanced from a language used to constrain UML models to a constraint language that is applied to various modelling languages. This includes Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) and meta-modelling languages like MOF or Ecore. Consequently, it is rather common to provide variability for OCL parsers to work with different modelling languages. A second variability dimension relates to the technical space that models are realised in. Current OCL interpreters do not support such variability as their implementation is typically bound to a specific technical space like Java, Ecore, or a specific model repository. In this paper we propose a generic adaptation architecture for OCL that hides models and model instances behind well-defined interfaces. We present how the implementation of such an architecture for DresdenOCL enables reuse of the same OCL interpreter for various technical spaces and evaluate our approach in three case studies. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.