Improving uml profile design practices by leveraging conceptual domain models

TLDR

UML profile extensions have enabled rapid domain‑specific modeling, yet their design is often ad‑hoc and constrained by the abstract‑syntax level, making it difficult to build accurate conceptual domain models and maintain traceable mappings. The paper proposes to systematize UML profile design built upon conceptual domain models by adopting a minimal set of framing rules. The approach begins with a conceptual domain model that defines the domain ontology, applies a minimal set of framing rules derived from common design patterns, and then checks the model for self‑consistency and transforms it into stereotypes, tags, and constraints.

Abstract

The profile extension mechanism has permitted a rapid growth of the use of UML as a domain-specific modeling language. However, designing profiles typically falls into ad-hoc processes that often rely on domain-inappropriate primitives. One of the fundamental reasons is that profiles are specified on the same level of abstraction as the UML abstract syntax and consequently they narrow down the design space to an implementation level. In order to improvethis situation, some profile designers start from a "conceptual domain model" that states the domain ontology, and only then deal with finding out the profile extensions to support it. In spite of this, building truthfulness conceptual domain models and maintaining traceable mapping with the profile view is a bit of an art. In this paper, we propose to systematize the design of UML profiles built-upon conceptual domain models, by adopting a minimal setof framing rules. As these rules are defined on the basis of regularly occurring design patterns, domain models can be afterward checked for self-consistency and interactively transformed in stereotypes, tags and constraints