Featherweight OCL: a study for the consistent semantics of OCL 2.3 in HOL

Abstract

At its origins, OCL was conceived as a strict semantics for undefinedness, with the exception of the logical connectives of type Boolean that constitute a three-valued propositional logic. Recent versions of the OCL standard added a second exception element, which, similar to the null references in programming languages, is given a non-strict semantics. In this paper, we report on our results in formalizing the core of OCL in higher-order logic (HOL). This formalization revealed several inconsistencies and contradictions in the current version of the OCL standard. These inconsistencies and contradictions are reflected in the challenge to define and implement OCL tools (e. g., interpreters, code-generators, or theorem provers) in a uniform manner.