The Research On The Automatic Detection Of Semantic Inconsistency Of OCL Invariant Based Upon OWL2DL Ontology

Modern information system is a typical kind of complex system and its scale isgetting larger and larger. The complexity of user requirements is growing and thefailure rate of project is remaining obstinately high. It is vital that semantically correctUML/OCL schema can be constructed during the requirement analysis phase ofinformation system development. Checking the semantic inconsistency of UML/OCLschema is the main approach to gurantee semantic correctness of the schema. Thestate-of-the-art review indicates that the research on detecting the semanticinconsistency of OCL constraint is poor. The thesis limits the scope of the UML/OCLschema, which is comprised of UML class diagram and OCL invariant. And the thesisproposes the automatic detection method for semantic inconsistency of OCL invariantsbased upon OWL2DL ontology. According to the thesis the corresponding softwarecan be developed which can detect the semantic inconsistency of OCL invariantautomatically during the requirement analysis phase. Thus the correct guide to thefurther design and implementation can be efficiently assured by the semanticallycorrect UML/OCL schema and the quality of the final information system is muchimproved. The thesis is supported by Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing City inChina and it has both theoretical and practical significance. The innovativecontribution of this thesis are given as follows,1. Proposes a formal framework of ATuo2method based on first-order predicatelogic. The thesis presents ATuo2method by means of metamodel based transformationmethodology. UML/OCL metamodel is represented informally, while OWL2DLontology definition metamodel is defined formally whose universe is totally differentfrom UML/OCL metamodel. The thesis investigates the UML/OCL metamodel andOWL2DL ontology definition metamodel in depth. Based on first-order predicatelogic the formal framework of ATuo2method is constructed to make the two kinds ofmetamodel being coordinate in a same universe in order to ensure the wholeness,systematicness and precision of mapping rules. The way of defining mapping rules inthe framework of ATuo2method is also presented.2. Develops the automatic semantics-preserving transformation from OCLexpression to OWL2DL expression. The abstect syntax tree is employed to supportthe process of automatic semantics-preserving transformation from OCL expression to OWL2DL class expression. Based on the formal framework of ATuo2method thethesis develops the mapping rules concerning four kinds of OCL expression, whichmaps abstract syntax of OCL expression to OWL2DL ontology definition metamodel.Considering that OWL makes Open World Assumption, the thesis adopts closureaxiom to carry out the semantics-preserving transformation from OCL relationalexpression to OWL2DL class expression. For OWL2DL lacks the constructsexpressing conditional semantics. Applying ontology design pattern the thesis simulatethe semantics of if-then-else-endif statement and transform OCL IfExpression to OWL2DL class expressions. Following the presented method the OCL invariants can betransformed to OWL2DL axioms in both manual way and automatic way with thesupport of developed software.3. Detect minimal semantic inconsistency of OCL invariants based on descriptionlogic debugging reasoning. The thesis introduces minimal semantic inconsistency ofOCL invariants and gives the formal definition of it to investigate the essentialproperties. To detect the minimal semantic inconsistency of OCL invariants usingdescription logic reasoning, the representation of minimal semantic inconsistency ofOCL invariants is described as the cause of unsatisfiable concept in OWL2DLontology. And detection of minimal semantic inconsistency of OCL invariants can bereduced to the search of the cause of unsatisfiable concept in OWL2DL ontology.Moreover the algorithm for detecting the minimal semantic inconsistency of OCLinvariants is proposed based on description logic reasoning for debugging.Finally the thesis makes a summary and points out the disadvantages of our work.Then the further direction is given in the future research.