Realizing Correspondences in Multi-viewpoint Specifications

Viewpoint modeling is an effective technique for specifying complex software systems in terms of a set of independent viewpoints and correspondences between them. Each viewpoint focuses on a particular aspect of the system, abstracting away from the rest of the concerns. Correspondences specify the relationships between the elements in different views, together with the constraints that guarantee the consistency among these elements. However, most Architectural Frameworks, which follow a multi-viewpoint approach, either do not consider the explicit specification of correspondences, or do it in a very simplistic way. This paper proposes a generic model-driven approach to the specification and realization of correspondences between viewpoints. In particular, we show how correspondences can be modeled both extensionally and intensionally, and propose the use of model transformations to connect these two approaches. As a proof-of-concept, we show how our proposal can be implemented in the context of the RM-ODP and UML4ODP, and present a tool to support the realization of correspondences between ODP views. This proposal can be extended to any other Architectural Framework that uses models to represent their views.