A systematic review of UML model consistency management

  • Authors:

  • Francisco J. Lucas;Fernando Molina;Ambrosio Toval

  • Affiliations:

  • Software Engineering Research Group, Department of Informatics and Systems, University of Murcia, Spain;Software Engineering Research Group, Department of Informatics and Systems, University of Murcia, Spain;Software Engineering Research Group, Department of Informatics and Systems, University of Murcia, Spain

  • Venue:
  • Information and Software Technology
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Information System (IS) development has been beset by consistency problems since its infancy. These problems are greater still in UML software development, and are principally caused by the existence of multiple views (models) for the same system, and may involve potentially contradictory system specifications. Since a considerable amount of work takes place within the scope of model consistency management, this paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) which was carried out to discover the various current model consistency conceptions, proposals, problems and solutions provided. To do this, a total of 907 papers related to UML model consistency published in literature and extracted from the most relevant scientific sources (IEEE Computer Society, ACM Digital Library, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and the SCOPUS Database) were considered, of which 42 papers were eventually analyzed. This systematic literature review resulted in the identification of the current state-of-the-art with regard to UML model consistency management research along with open issues, trends and future research within this scope. A formal approach for the handling of inconsistency problems which fulfils the identified limitations is also briefly presented.