Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
15.2
Model Editors and Analysis Tools
The first level of tool support required for the development of large sys-
tems specification should be provided by model editors. The RM-ODP was
originally defined to be independent from any particular notation for express-
ing its concepts, so as to increase its use and flexibility. In other words, the
ODP viewpoint languages are abstract languages in the sense that they de-
fine what concepts should be used, not how they should be represented. This
lack of notations for expressing precisely the different models involved in a
multi-viewpoint specification is a common feature for most enterprise archi-
tectural approaches, including the Zachman framework, the 4+1 model and
the RM-ODP.
The problem with defining only the abstract syntax of a language is that it
makes the development of tools for writing the viewpoint specifications more
dicult. More information is needed to allow the formal analysis of what
is produced, and the possible derivation of implementations from the system
specifications, and to manage the myriad other details needed to complete the
specification.
There have been many different notations proposed as ODP specification
languages. The earlier ones came from academia, based primarily on for-
mal languages such as Z [95], Object-Z [67], LOTOS [1, 18], Alloy [76] and
Maude [61]. These notations provide precise system specifications and, more
importantly, they allow the rigorous analysis of the systems, with tools for
reasoning about the specifications including consistency checking, simulation
for prototyping or model checking. However, the precision inherent in formal
description techniques and the lack of industrial tool support has hampered
their wide adoption.
As we mentioned before, the acceptance of UML, the number of avail-
able UML tools, the increasing interest in model-driven development and
the model-driven architecture (MDA) initiative, all contributed to motivat-
ing ISO/IEC and ITU-T to launch the UML4ODP joint project in 2004. This
aimed to promote the use of UML for ODP system specifications. We have
already described the UML4ODP project and its notation in section 1.7.2.
The goal of this joint project was that ODP modellers should use the UML
notation for expressing their ODP specifications in a standard graphical way,
and that UML modellers should be able to use the RM-ODP concepts and
mechanisms to structure their large UML system specifications.
The fact that the UML4ODP notation is defined as an extension to UML
by means of a set of UML profiles makes its adoption easier. UML profiles
are available for all the major UML modelling tools, which enables the use of
the UML4ODP notation within them. Furthermore, specialized model editors
for UML4ODP have been created making use of these profiles and these are
also available as plug-ins for some of the widely used UML modelling tools.
