Formal Semantics and Ontological Analysis for Understanding Subsetting, Specialization and Redefinition of Associations in UML

The definition of the exact meaning of conceptual modeling constructs is considered a relevant issue since it contributes to their effective and appropriate use by conceptual modelers. This paper studies three related constructs that enhance the expressiveness of the UML language about associations and which still lack a complete and comprehensive study, namely, association subsetting, specialization and redefinition. It formalizes their semantics, analyses them from an ontological perspective and compares them. The semantic formalization is based on mapping the studied constructs to a basic UML layer which have a previous formal definition in the literature. Furthermore, the ontological analysis developed here is based on a formal theory of relations which is part of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO).