Distributed Constraints Maintenance in Collaborative UML Modeling Environments

Constraints maintenance plays an important role in keeping the integrity and validity of models in UML software modeling. Constraints maintenance capabilities are reasonably adequate in UML modeling applications, but few work has been done to address the distributed constraints maintenance issue in collaborative UML modeling environments. In this paper, we propose a novel solution to the issue, which can retain the effects of all concurrent modeling operations even though they may cause constraints violations. We further contribute a distributed constraints maintenance framework, in which the solution is encapsulated as a generic engine to be mounted in a variety of single-user UML modeling applications for supporting distributed collaborative UML modeling and distributed constraints maintenance.