Abstract
The Object Constraint Language (OCL) is a textual, declarative language typically used as part of the UML standard for specifying constraints and queries on models. Several attempts have been proposed in the past for translating OCL expressions into SQL queries in the context of Model Driven Engineering (MDE). To cope with OCL expressions that include iterators, previous attempts resorted to imperative features (loops, cursors) of SQL, with the consequent loss of efficiency. In this paper, we define (and implement) a novel mapping from OCL to SQL that covers (possibly nested) iterators, without resorting to imperative, non-declarative features of SQL. We show with a preliminary benchmark that our mapping generates SQL queries that can be efficiently executed on mid- and large-size SQL databases.
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Notes
- 1.
Notice that we do not include in our language operations on collections of collections, nor we support the
value. Since SQL does not natively support (parametrized) structured collections, mappings from OCL to SQL would need to explicitly encode this “structure” in the generated queries, as proposed in [8]. Similarly, since SQL does not natively support the invalid value, mappings from OCL to SQL would have to handle this value in “ad hoc” ways. Currently, none of the other mappings is able to support (parametrized) structured collections or the
value. - 2.
At the time of writing, our tool temporarily uses an OCL parser that requires adding contextual information to the OCL expressions to be input. Please, check the latest information about this issue in our tool’s web site.
- 3.
SQL engines have highly optimized strategies for executing queries over large databases. Our OCL2PSQL mapping follows some of the well-known optimization “tips” for SQL engines. Nevertheless, we should be aware that “development [for SQL engines] is ongoing, so no optimization tip is reliable for the long term.” (MySQL 8.0 Reference Manual, (13.2.11.11 Optimizing Subqueries).
- 4.
Although we have used MySQL for running our examples, we believe that our overall results should apply likewise to the other SQL engines.
- 5.
The experiment was carried out on a machine with Intel Pentium M 2.00 GHz 600 MHz, and 1 GB of RAM.
value. Since SQL does not natively support (parametrized) structured collections, mappings from OCL to SQL would need to explicitly encode this “structure” in the generated queries, as proposed in [
value.References
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Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by the Vietnamese-German University (VGU-PSSG grant 14/01 - 11/06/2019).
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Nguyen Phuoc Bao, H., Clavel, M. (2019). OCL2PSQL: An OCL-to-SQL Code-Generator for Model-Driven Engineering. In: Dang, T., Küng, J., Takizawa, M., Bui, S. (eds) Future Data and Security Engineering. FDSE 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11814. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35653-8_13
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