Authors: Fabian Büttner, Lars Hamann, Martin Gogolla, Mirco Kuhlmann
Tags: 2012, conceptual modeling
Since several years, the Object Constraint Language (OCL) is a central component in modeling and transformation languages like the Unified Modeling Language, the Meta Object Facility, and Query View Transformation. Consequently, approaches MDE (Model-Driven Engineering) depend on this language. OCL is present not only in areas influenced by the OMG but also in the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF). Thus the quality of OCL and its realization in tools seems to be crucial for the success of model-driven development. Surprisingly, up to now a benchmark for OCL to measure quality properties has not been proposed. This paper puts forward in the first part the concepts of a comprehensive OCL benchmark. Our benchmark covers (1) OCL engine accuracy (e.g., for the handling of the undefined value, the use of variables and the implementation of OCL standard operations), (2) OCL engine determinateness properties (e.g., for the collection operations ‘any’ and ‘flatten’), and (3) OCL engine efficiency (for data type and user-defined operations). In the second part, this paper empirically evaluates the proposed benchmark concepts by examining several OCL tools. The paper clarifies a number of differences in handling particular language features and under specifications in the OCL standard.Read the full paper here: http://www.sosym.org/
