OCL usability: a major challenge in adopting UML
Imran Sarwar Bajwa, Behzad Bordbar, Mark Lee · 2014
In this paper, we present a novel approach to address the OCL usability problem by automatically producing OCL from English text. The main aspects of OCL usability problem are attributed as hard syntax of language, ambiguous nature of OCL expressions, and difficult interpretation of large OCL expressions. Our contribution is a novel approach that aims to present a method involving using Natural Language expressions and Model Transformation technology to improve OCL usability. The aim of the method is to produce a framework so that the user of UML tools can write constraints and pre/post conditions in English and the framework converts such English expressions to the equivalent OCL statements. The proposed approach is implemented in a software tool NL2OCLviaSBVR that generates OCL constraints from English text via SBVR. Our tool allows software modelers and developers to generate well-formed OCL expressions that results in valid and precise models. An empirical evaluation of the OCL constraints reveals that our natural language based approach to generate OCL constraints significantly outperforms the most closely related technique in terms of effort and effectiveness.