Rule-Based Simplification of OCL Constraints
Martin Giese, Reiner Hähnle, Daniel H. Larsson · 2004
Abstract. To help designers in writing OCL constraints, we have to construct systems that can generate some of these constraints. This might be done by instantiating templates, by combining prefabricated parts, or by more general computation. Such generated specifications will often contain redundancies that reduce their readability. In this paper, we explore the possibilities of simplifying OCL formulae through the repeated application of simple rules. We discuss the different kinds of rules that are needed, and we describe a prototypical implementation of the approach. 1 Introduction The Object Constraint Language (OCL) [12] is designed with human authors and readers in mind. While some of todays UML tools allow attaching OCL constraints to diagrams and allow to check their syntax with a parser, there is practically no support for authoring OCL specifications. But writing good specifications is hard, and as the software to be specified becomes larger and more complex, designers will need tools that help them with that task.