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Definition of the extensible environment API for OCL parsing and evaluation.
Package Specification
This package defines the API for the environments in which OCL expressions are
parsed and evaluated, along with the parser façade.
First, and most importantly to users of the OCL parser API, parsing of OCL
documents is performed by the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.OCL} parser façade.
OCL documents are provide as {@link org.eclipse.ocl.OCLInput} objects, obtaining
their content from a string or a data stream. These documents declare constraints
of the following forms in one or more classifier, operation, or property
contexts (with optional package context declarations):
- invariant constraints (in classifier context)
- pre-condition, post-condition constraints, and body expressions (in
operation context)
- initial value and derivation expressions (in property context)
- additional operation and property definitions (in classifier context)
These constraints are defined within the context of a particular OCL
instance; thus the OCL defines a root environment. Disparate sets
of constraints (including additional operations and properties) may be defined
in multiple different OCLs. The constraints and
{@link org.eclipse.ocl.expressions.OCLExpression}s parsed by an OCL
may be checked (in the case of constraints) or evaluated (in the case of
expressions) by the OCL on a context element, an instance of the
metamodel supported by that OCL's environment factory.
The {@link org.eclipse.ocl.helper.OCLHelper} interface provides a convenient
API for parsing constraints and query expressions on a finer granularity than
the document. It is particularly convenient for parsing end evaluating
constraints that are embedded in models, in which the context is usually
defined by the placement of the constraint. The OCL helper also provides
content-assist (expression completion) facilities.
The {@link org.eclipse.ocl.Environment} interface describes the
environment in which an OCL expression is parsed. The environment provides
two major functions to the parser:
- Name resolution: the parser looks up in its current environment names
that it finds in an expression. These include package, classifier,
attribute, reference, operation, and variable names. Nested environments
define nested scopes, to support shadowing of names (e.g., operation
parameters or let variables that hide attributes of the context
classifier)
- Tracking the context: the environment defines an optional package
context, a mandatory classifier context, and (for feature constraints)
an operation or property context. An feature context is implemented as a
child environment of a classifier context; this allows for definition of
constraints on operations in a different classifier context than the
classifier that defines the operation
- Metamodel introspection: because the OCL parser API is generic, targeting
any EMF-based metamodel that defines UML-like semantics, the environment
API also provides the introspection facilities required by the parser to
distinguish different kinds of classifiers, to determine the generalization
relationships between them, obtain the types of properties, etc.
Environments are created by environment factories. An
{@link org.eclipse.ocl.EnvironmentFactory} is provided to an
{@link org.eclipse.ocl.OCL} to create environments when it needs to.
Environment factories are the starting point for plugging an EMF-based
metamodel into the parser framework. The environments that they create provide
the bindings for the generic types representing the UML concepts required
by OCL, and perform introspection of the particular metamodel. Abstract partial
implementations of the factory and environment are provided and may be extended
by clients to support their metamodels. Existing concrete implementations of
the environment API may be found in the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.ecore} package
(for the OCL binding to Ecore) and the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.uml} package
(for the OCL binding to UML).
While the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.Environment} class provides a
parse-time environment, the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.EvaluationEnvironment}
keeps track of the current values of variables in the evaluation of an OCL
expression. It also implements the metamodel-specific mechanisms for invoking
operations, navigating properties, etc. The EnvironmentFactory
is responsible for constructing EvaluationEnvironments. For
evaluating OCL constraints, the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.EvaluationVisitor}
walks the AST (parsed representation of an OCL expression), using the
evaluation environment to compute values. The
{@link org.eclipse.ocl.AbstractEnvironmentFactory} creates a useful default
implementation of the evaluation visitor, which supports any metamodel binding.
The behavior of this default implementation may be modified as need by custom
environment factories, by wrapping it with a custom visitor.
@see org.eclipse.ocl.OCL
@see org.eclipse.ocl.EnvironmentFactory
@see org.eclipse.ocl.Environment
@see org.eclipse.ocl.helper