Computer Science and Information Systems 2013 Volume 10, Issue 4, Pages: 1621-1646
https://doi.org/10.2298/CSIS121210067R
Full text ( 221 KB)


Possible realizations of multiplicity constraints

Rybola Zdeněk (Faculty of Information Technology, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic)
Richta Karel (Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic + Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic)

Model Driven Development (MDD) approach is often used to model application data and behavior by a Platform Independent Model (PIM) and to generate Platform Specific Models (PSMs) and even the source code by model transformations. However, these transformations usually omit constraints of the binary association multiplicities, especially the source class optionality constraint. This paper is an extended version of the paper ’Transformation of Special Multiplicity Constraints - Comparison of Possible Realizations’ presented at MDASD workshop at the FedCSIS 2012 conference. In this paper, we summarize the process of the transformation of a binary association from a PIM into a PSM for relational databases. We suggest several possible realizations of the source class optionality constraint to encourage the automatically transformation and discuss their advantages and disadvantages.We also provide experimental comparison of our suggested realizations to the common realization where this constraint is omitted.

Keywords: MDD, UML, transformation, multiplicity constraints, source class optionality constraint, OCL, SQL