WELL-FORMEDNESS , CONSISTENCY AND COMPLETENESS OF GRAPHIC MODELS

This paper clarifies the notions of well-formedness, consistency and completeness of graphic models. A model or a diagram is well-formed if its structure satisfies the syntactic rules, especially its elements are type compatible if a type system is defined. When models are considered as specifications of software systems, consistency means that there exists a system that satisfies the specification. Completeness means that all the systems that satisfy the specification are what users want. The paper proposes a framework for the formal definition of the abstract syntax and type systems of modelling languages. A formal notation is advanced by extending and adapting BNF. A first order language for the definition of consistency and completeness constraints are also presented and illustrated by examples.

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