Fixing up non-executable operations in UML/OCL conceptual schemas

Abstract

An operation is executable if there is at least one information base in which its preconditions hold and such that the new information base obtained from applying its postconditions satisfies all the integrity constraints. A non-executable operation is useless since it may never be applied. Therefore, identifying non-executable operations and fixing up their definition is a relevant task that should be performed as early as possible in software development. We address this problem in the paper by proposing an algorithm to automatically compute the missing effects in postconditions that would ensure the executability of the operation.