Insights on the Use of OCL in Diverse Industrial Applications

The Object Constraint Language (OCL) is a widely accepted language, standardized by OMG, for specifying constraints at various meta levels (e.g., meta-models and models). Despite its wide acceptance, there is a lack of understanding about terminology and purposes for which OCL can be used. In this paper, we aim to reduce this gap and provide guidance for applying OCL in practical contexts and we report our experience of applying OCL for different industrial projects in diverse domains: Communications and Control, Oil and Gas production, Energy Equipment and Services, and Recycling. Based on our experience, first, we unify the commonly used terminology in the literature for applying OCL in different ways for addressing diverse industrial problems. Second, we report the key results of the industrial application of OCL. Finally, we provide guidance to researchers and practitioners for choosing an appropriate meta level and purpose for their specific industrial problem at hand.

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