Enhancing the semantics of UML association redefinition

Association redefinition is a UML construct that permits us to define an association end more specifically in a particular context. Concretely, it allows specifying some additional participation and cardinality constraints on the association. Association refinements, which have been studied and used by many authors in conceptual modelling languages prior to UML, are closely related to association redefinitions. They also permit to refine the ends of an association adding participation and cardinality constraints. In this paper, we analyze and compare the semantics of both concepts and propose to extend the semantics of association redefinitions in UML to cover all the constraints that may be expressed by association refinements in other conceptual modelling languages. Additionally, we present how to integrate previous results on validation of association refinements to UML and how to generate code for a relational technology platform. Finally, we provide a prototype tool to verify the feasibility of the approach. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.