On the Need of User-defined Libraries in OCL

Abstract

Reuse is a fundamental concept of efficient software development. Object-oriented implementation languages offer reuse on different levels of granularity: method, class, library. While encapsulation of implementation code within methods and classes enables reuse within a project, user-defined libraries are widely used to share implementation code among different projects. The specification language OCL offers language concepts like defined attributes and defined operations to enable reuse within a project. However, reuse among different projects is not possible since OCL does not support the concept of user-defined libraries. There is no standardized way to import user-defined OCL constraints into another project. In this paper, we argue on the need of a standardized mechanism to make reuse of OCL specifications within a different context possible.