Modeling the ODP computational viewpoint with UML 2.0

The ODP computational viewpoint describes the functionality of a system and its environment in terms of a configuration of objects interacting at interfaces, independently of their distribution. Up until UML version 2.0, both the lack of precision in the UML definition and the semantic gap between the ODP concepts and the UML constructs hindered its application for ODP computational viewpoint modeling. With the advent of UML 2.0 the situation may have changed, because its semantics have been more precisely defined and it now incorporates a whole new set of concepts more apt for modeling the structure and behavior of distributed systems. In this paper, we explore the benefits provided by the new extension mechanisms of UML and, more specifically, we present a UML profile for modeling the ODP computational viewpoint concepts. We also show a case study that illustrates how our proposal is applied to a multimedia distributed system.