TADESSE TAREKE.pdf - Addis Ababa University

3.1 UML EXTENSION MECHANISMS
CHAPTER 3
RELATED WORK
Modeling business rules object-oriented systems did not find a direct support in the
standard UML notations [38]. To that end, the work of Hay [24] presents
metamodels for business rules artifacts using entity relation diagram (ERD).
However, whereas metamodeling of business rules elements such as terms are
useful, it does not give any idea on how to apply OO approach, or UML.
UML incorporates, in an integrated way, several notations for object-oriented
modeling [8, 46, 47, 48, 50], although these notations are not enough for building
business rules systems where business rules are stored in a repository system
[14, 25, 38].
Though UML provides a rich set of notations, it is also intended to be extensible,
adaptable, and modifiable [8, 46, 48, 50]. In other words, UML provides refining
mechanisms of the standard semantics in a strictly additive manner provided that
additional semantics do not contradict or conflict with the standard semantics.
These mechanisms are called UML Extension Mechanisms and are used to
capture semantics that are significant outside the scope of the language.
Prior to UML 2.0, the idea of extending the UML was limited to stereotypes and
profiles [8, 41, 50, 52]. Stereotypes are localized extensions that take the form of
adding adornments to existing modeling elements. Profiles, on the other hand, are
the mechanisms, which were envisioned for larger scale changes, such as the
addition of Specification and Description Language (SDL) [39].
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