Ontology-Based Verification of UML Class/OCL Model

Software models describe structures, relationships and features of the software. Modern software development methodologies such as MDE (Model Driven Engineering) use models as core elements. In MDE, the code is automatically generated from the model and model errors can implicitly shift into the code, which are difficult to find and fix. Model verification is a promising solution to this problem. However, coverage of all facets of model verification is a painful job and existing formal/semi-formal verification methods are greatly inspired by mathematics and difficult to understand by the software practitioners. This work considers particularly UML Class/OCL (Unified Modeling Language Class/Object Constraint Language) model and presents an ontology-based verification method. In the proposed method, a class diagram is transformed into ontology specified in OWL (Web Ontology Language) and constraints into SPARQL NAF (Negation as Failure) queries. This work tries to demonstrate that the proposed approach can efficiently cover all aspects of UML Class/OCL model verification.