Abstract
The paradigm of contractual specification provides a transparent way of specifying systems. It clearly distinguishes between client and implementer obligations. One of the best known languages used for this purpose is OCL. Nevertheless, OCL does not provide primitives for a compact specification of what remains unchanged when a method is executed. In this paper, problems with specifying invariability are listed and some weaknesses of existing solutions are pointed out. The question of specifying invariability in OCL is studied and a simple but expressive and flexible extension is proposed. It is shown that this extension has a simple OCL based semantics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Baar, T.: OCL and Graph-Transformations – A Symbiotic Alliance to Alleviate the Frame Problem. In: Proc. of MoDELS 2005 Satelite Workshop on Tool Support for OCL and Related Formalisms, Montego Bay, Jamaica, October 4, pp. 83–99 (2005)
Borgida, A., Reiter, R., Mylopoulos, J.: On the Frame Problem in Procedure Specifications. In: 15’th Int. Conf. on Software Engineering, Baltimore, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (1993)
Darvas, A., Mueller, P.: Reasoning About Method Calls in JML Specifications. In: Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Formal Techniques for Java-like Programs (FTfJP 2005), Glasgow, Scotland (July 2005)
Finkelstein, A., Kramer, J., Nuseibeh, B., Finkelstein, L., Goedicke, M.: Viewpoints: A Framework for Integrating Multiple Perspectives in System Development. International Journal on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 31–58 (1991)
Gogolla, M, Richters, M.: Use: A UML-based Specification Environment, http://www.db.informatik.uni-bremen.de/projects/USE/
Jezequel, J.M.: Object-Oriented Software Engineering with Eiffel. Eiffel in Practice Series. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1996)
Hoare, T.: An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming. CACM 12(10) (1969)
Mitchell, R., McKim, J.: Design by contract by example. Addison-Wesley, Reading (2001)
Marek, W., Truszczynski, M.: Nonmonotonic Logic, Context-Dependent Reasoning. Artificial Intelligence. Springer, Heidelberg (1993)
Meyer, B.: Object-Oriented Software Construction. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1998)
Minsky, M.: A framework for representing knowledge. Technical Report 306, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT (1974)
Mueller, P., Poetzsch-Heffter, A., Leavens, G.T.: Modular Specification of Frame Properties in JML. In: Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, vol. 15, pp. 117–154. Wiley, Chichester (2003)
OMG, MDA Guide, Version 1.0.1 (June 2003)
OMG, Meta-Object Facility Specification, Version 1.4 (April 2003)
OMG, OCL Specification, Version 2.0 (October 2004)
OMG, Unified Modeling Language Specification, Version 2.0 (October 2004)
Schubert, L.: Monotonic Solution of the Frame Problem in the Situation Calculus. In: Kyburg, H., Loui, R., Carlson, G. (eds.) Knowledge Representation and Defeasible Reasoning, pp. 23–67. Kluwer, Dordrecht (1990)
Warmer, J., Kleppe, A.: Object Constraint Language: Getting Your Models Ready for MDA. Addison Wesley Professional, Reading (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kosiuczenko, P. (2006). Specification of Invariability in OCL. In: Nierstrasz, O., Whittle, J., Harel, D., Reggio, G. (eds) Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems. MODELS 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4199. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11880240_47
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11880240_47
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-45772-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45773-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)