OCLLib, OCLUnit, OCLDoc: Pragmatic extensions for the object constraint language

Abstract

The usage of the Unified Modeling Language in the industrial context becomes increasingly popular. There is an agreement in academia that the Object Constraint Language (OCL) is suitable for defining model constraints and queries. However, it has not yet been broadly adopted by practitioners because they find it difficult to define OCL expressions. Thus, simplification is desirable to increase the use of OCL in practice. We propose OCL libraries (OCLLib), which simplify the development of OCL expressions and enable a high reuse factor, are configurable, testable (OCLUnit) and documented (OCLDoc). In this paper we present the underlying concepts related to OCL library development we used in UML specific and domain specific projects conducted in academic and industrial contexts, respectively. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.