Consistency checking of re-engineered UML class diagrams via datalog+/-

Abstract

UML class diagrams (UCDs) are a widely adopted formalism for modeling the intensional structure of a software system. Although UCDs are typically guiding the implementation of a system, it is common in practice that developers need to recover the class diagram from an implemented system. This process is known as reverse engineering. A fundamental property of reverse engineered (or simply re-engineered) UCDs is consistency, showing that the system is realizable in practice. In this work, we investigate the consistency of re-engineered UCDs, and we show is pspace-complete. The upper bound is obtained by exploiting algorithmic techniques developed for conjunctive query answering under guarded Datalog+/-, that is, a key member of the Datalog+/- family of KR languages, while the lower bound is obtained by simulating the behavior of a polynomial space Turing machine.