Consistency Checking of RM-ODP Specifications

Ensuring that specifications are consistent is an important part of specification development and testing. In this paper we introduce the ConsVISor tool for consistency checking of RM-ODP specifications. This tool is a category theory based consistency checker for formal specifications in a variety of languages, including both graphical and non-graphical modeling languages. Because RM-ODP supports multiple viewpoints, it is necessary to have a logical framework that can compose viewpoints and that can detect inconsistencies (feature interactions) among multiple viewpoints. The ConsVISor tool composes viewpoints by using the colimit operation of category theory. ConsVISor checks consistency using a combination of theorem proving and model-based reasoning. Some examples of the use of the tool are given.