Information Technology Reference
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tion components for, the complete system. Once we have the correspondences,
either by explicit definition or by derivation from some higher-level rules, we
can use them to run checks and analyse the behaviour of the system we have
specified.
Correspondences also have other important uses. For example, since they
identify the related elements in a multi-viewpoint specification, they can help
to identify the elements that would be affected by a change. Thus, they
can be useful in performing some kind of what-if or impact analysis: which
information and computational elements will be affected if I decide to change
a policy in the enterprise viewpoint? Will a change in a set of engineering
objects affect any particular service level agreement or environment contract
in the enterprise or computational viewpoints?
Similarly, the constraints associated with the correspondence rules can be
used to maintain consistency in the viewpoint specifications. Consider, for
example, a consistent set of models related by a set of correspondences. If we
make a change in one of the models, in many situations it is possible to prop-
agate that change through the correspondences, thereby changing the other
models so that the consistency is restored. Think, for instance, of a correspon-
dence that establishes that the name of a binding object in the computational
viewpoint is the same as the name of the corresponding channel in the engi-
neering viewpoint. If the designer decides to change the name of the channel,
the change can easily be propagated to the computational binding object, and
vice versa.
«profile»
Correspondence_Profile
«metaclass»
Package
«stereotype»
CorrespondenceSpecification
«metaclass»
Usage
«stereotype»
CorrespondingSpecification
«stereotype»
CorrespondenceRule
«metaclass»
Constraint
«stereotype»
CorrespondenceLink
«metaclass»
Class
+endPoint1 : Element [1..*]
+endPoint2 : Element [1..*]
FIGURE 7.3: The correspondence profile from UML4ODP.
Taken from the UML4ODP standard; for copyright, see Preface.
