Isolating and Reusing Template Instances in UML

Abstract

International audienceIn MBE, design of systems can be improved and accelerated thanks to reusable models which are made available in model repositories or libraries. One answer for designing reusable models is parameterization as o↵ered by UML templates and their binding relationship. The stan- dard aims at embracing under the same constructs two distinct kinds of template usages, namely template instantiation and aspectual binding. Template instantiation is concerned with the capacity of UML templates to model generic components (like C++ templates or Java generics) and produce new models from their binding. Aspectual binding is much more concerned with the capacity of UML templates to specify functionalities to inject into models of systems (contexts) which must conform to a required parameter model. In this paper, we focus on the generative in- terpretation of UML template binding. On the basis of a deep analysis of the standard, it will be shown that template binding consists in template instantiation plus context merging. This allows to isolate the capacity of instantiating templates (under their generative view) to get reusable models coming from applicative contexts. Then the possibility of partial instantiation inspired by partial binding as promoted by the standard is studied. At a practical level, related functionalities are o↵ered within Eclipse