Supporting Reuse and Evolution of UML Models

Programming Technology Lab Vrije Universiteit Brussel Pleinlaan 2 1050 Brussels BELGIUM Phone: +32 2 629 3306 Fax: +32 2 629 3525 { tommens | clucas | prsteyae }@vub.ac.be Abstract UML provides little support for modelling reusable specifications and designs. To deal with this problem, we enhance UML with support for reuse and evolution of model components (more specifically, collaborating classes). To this extent, we enhance the UML (meta-) model with the “reuse contract” formalism. Among others, this gives us a formal semantics for reuse that allows us to detect reuse and composition conflicts automatically.