Assessing the Impact of Coupling on the Understandability and Modifiability of OCL Expressions within UML/OCL Combined Models

Diagram-based UML notation is limited in its expressiveness thus producing a model that would be severely underspecified. The flaws in the limitation of the UML diagrams are solved by specifying UML/OCL combined models, OCL being an essential add-on to the UML diagrams. Aware of the importance of building precise models, the main goal of this paper is to carefully describe a family of experiments we have undertaken to ascertain whether any relationship exists between object coupling (defined through metrics related to navigations and collection operations) and two maintainability sub-characteristics: understandability and modifiability of OCL expressions. If such a relationship exists, we will have found early indicators of the understandability and modifiability of OCL expressions. Even though the results obtained show empirical evidence that such a relationship exists, they must be considered as preliminaries. Further validation is needed to be performed to strengthen the conclusion...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: METRICS
• Authors: Luis Reynoso, Marcela Genero, Mario Piattini, M. Esperanza Manso
• Keywords: Diagram-based UML Notation, METRICS 2005, OCL Expressions, Software Engineering, UML Diagrams