A constraint diagram reasoning system

Gem Stapleton, John Howse, John Taylor

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceeding with ISSN or ISBNConference contribution with ISSN or ISBNpeer-review

Abstract

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a collection of notations which are mainly diagrammatic. These notations are used by software engineers in the process of object oriented modelling. The only textual notation in the UML is the Object Constraint Language (OCL). The OCL is used to express logical constraints such as system invariants. Constraint diagrams are designed to provide a diagrammatic alternative to the OCL. Since constraint diagrams are visual they complement existing notations in the UML. Spider diagrams form the basis of constraint diagrams and sound and complete reasoning systems have been developed. Spider diagrams allow subset relations between sets and cardinality constraints on sets to be expressed. In addition to this, constraint diagrams allow universal quantification and relational navigation and hence are vastly more expressive. In this paper we present the first constraint diagram reasoning system. We give syntax and semantics for constraint diagrams we call CD1 diagrams. We identify syntactic criteria that allow us to determine whether a CD1 diagram is satisfiable. We give descriptions of a set of sound and complete reasoning rules for CD1 diagrams.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the International Conference on Visual Languages and Computing, DMS 2003
EditorsA.F. Cardenas, P. Mussio
Place of PublicationCambridge, MA, United States
PublisherKnowledge Systems Institute
Pages263-270
Number of pages8
ISBN (Print)1891706316
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2003
EventProceedings of the International Conference on Visual Languages and Computing, DMS 2003 - Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA, 24-26 September, 2003
Duration: 1 Jan 2003 → …

Conference

ConferenceProceedings of the International Conference on Visual Languages and Computing, DMS 2003
Period1/01/03 → …

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