On the Automated Derivation of Domain-Specific UML Profiles

The model-driven engineering (MDE) of domain-specific languages (DSL) is becoming increasingly important. In this area, metamodels are the central artefacts, defining the syntax and semantics of DSLs. Different technologies are available to create metamodels, with the Meta Object Facility (MOF) being one of them. Apart from other uses, a MOF-based metamodel can serve as input for an automated derivation of a profile for the Unified Modeling Language (UML). In this paper, we propose a novel mapping of redefined or subsetted metaclass attributes, so that the values of their corresponding stereotype attributes can be computed at runtime by employing the Object Constraint Language (OCL). This is achieved by an automatic introduction of additional OCL expressions. A further contribution is the transfer of the static semantics of a metamodel to its derived UML profile. This transfer is realized by an automatic update of existing OCL constructs in such a way that they can be utilized for a generated UML profile without any modification.