The Object Constraint Language: Getting Your Models Ready for MDA (2nd Edition)
Praise forThe Object Constraint Language, Second Edition“MDA promises a revolution in the way we develop software. This book is essential reading for anyone intending to adopt MDA technology.”         —Tony Clark, PhD             King’s College, London“Through examples, Jos and Anneke demonstrate the power and intuitiveness of OCL, and the key role that this language plays in implementing and promoting MDA. The theme, structure, contents, and, not lastly, the clarity of explanations recommend this book as the best advocate for learning, using, and promoting OCL, UML, and MDA. I am sure that this work will contribute in a significant manner to the development and widespread use of new software technologies.”         —Dan Chiorean             Head of the Computer Science Research Laboratory             Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj"In this thoroughly revised edition, Jos and Anneke offer a concise, pragmatic, and pedagogic explanation of the Object Constraint Language (OCL) and its different applications. Their discussion of OCL's potential role in Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is timely and offers great insight into the way that UML can be taken to the next level of automated software development practice. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to get the most out of UML."—Shane Sendall, PhD, Senior Researcher, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in LausanneThe release of Unified Modeling Language (UML) 2.0 places renewed emphasis on the Object Constraint Language (OCL). Within UML, OCL is the standard for specifying expressions that add vital information to object-oriented models and other object-modeling artifacts. Model Driven Architecture (MDA) relies on OCL to add the level of programming detail necessary to enable platform-specific models (PSM) to communicate with platform-independent models (PIM).This book is a practical, accessible guide to OCL for software architects, designers, and developers. Much care has been taken during the redesign of OCL to ensure that the syntax remains readable and writable by the average software modeler.The Object Constraint Language, Second Edition, utilizes a case study to show how to exercise these compact but powerful expressions for maximum effect.This newly updated editionExplains why OCL is critical to MDA--and why UML alone is not enoughIntroduces an SQL-like syntax to OCLDefines the new language constructs of OCL 2.0Demonstrates how OCL can be incorporated into codeShares tips and tricks for applying OCL to real-world modeling challenges—showing which can be solved with UML and which require OCLUsing a combination of UML and OCL allows developers to realize the effective, consistent, and coherent models that are critical to working with MDA. The authors' pragmatic approach and illustrative use of examples will help application developers come quickly up to speed with this important object-modeling method—and will serve as a ready reference thereafter.