IOCL: An interactive tool for specifying, validating and evaluating OCL constraints

Abstract

The Object Constraint Language (OCL) is commonly used for specifying additional constraints on models, in addition, to the ones enforced by the semantics of the models. However, a lot of practitioners and even researchers are reluctant in using OCL to some extent due to the lack of sufficient familiarity with OCL. To facilitate practitioners and researchers in specifying OCL constraints, we designed and developed a web-based tool called interactive OCL (iOCL) for interactively specifying constraints on a given model. The core idea behind iOCL is to present and display only relevant details (e.g., operations) of OCL to users at a given step of constraint specification process, in addition to helping modelers with its syntax. We evaluated iOCL using a real-world case study from Cancer Registry of Norway and the results showed that iOCL can significantly reduce the time required to specify OCL constraints and decrease the possibility of making syntactic errors during the specification process. Thus, we conclude that iOCL can facilitate the process of OCL constraint specification. Interested users can try iOCL at: http://iocl.zen-tools.com/ . • iOCL specifies OCL constraints in an interactive manner. • iOCL dynamically interacts with users and only displays relevant details of OCL. • iOCL can help users to check the syntax of specified constraints. • iOCL was evaluated with a real-world case study from the Cancer Registry of Norway; • iOCL reduces the time of specifying OCL constraints and syntactic errors.