A Model Driven Approach for the Atomated Analysis of UML Class Diagrams

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is widely considered as the defacto standard for the design of Object Oriented systems. UML class diagrams are used to depict the static structure of a system with its entities and the relationships between them. The Object Constraint Language (OCL) is a textual language based on first-order logic and can be used to define constraints on the elements of class diagrams. The lack of strong formal semantics for the UML makes it difficult to analyse UML models. This work utilises Alloy to analyse UML models. More specifically, this work employs the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) technology to achieve an automated transformation of UML class diagrams enriched with OCL constraints to Alloy. This is accomplished by defining a number of transformation rules from UML and OCL concepts to Alloy concepts. However, due to the different philosophies of the UML and Alloy, the languages have a number of fundamental differences. These differences and their effect on the definition of the transformation rules is discussed. To bridge the differences and to achieve fully automated analysis of UML class diagrams though Alloy, a UML profile for Alloy is developed. Details of our implementation of the model transformation in the SiTra transformation engine and a number of case studies are also presented.