Static Consistency Checking for Distributed Specifications

Christian Nentwich, Wolfgang Emmerich and Anthony Finkelstein

Dept. of Computer Science,
University College London
Dept. of Computer Science
Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT UK

Abstract:
Software engineers building a complex system make use of a number of informal and semi-formal notations. We describe a framework, xlinkit, for managing the consistency of development artifacts expressed in such notations. xlinkit supports distributed software engineering by providing a distribution-transparent language for expressing constraints between specifications. It specifies a semantics for those constraints that permits the generation of hyperlinks between inconsistent elements. We give a formal semantics for link generation, and show how we expressed the rules of the UML Foundation/Core modules in our language. We outline how we implemented xlinkit as a light-weight web service using open standard technology and present the results of an evaluation against several sizeable UML models provided by industrial partners.


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Updated on: 17/09/2001
Wolfgang Emmerich