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MOCQL: A Declarative Language for Ad-Hoc Model Querying

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Book cover Modelling Foundations and Applications (ECMFA 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 7949))

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Abstract

This paper starts from the observation that existing model query facilities are not easy to use, and are thus not suitable for users without substantial IT/Computer Science background. In an attempt to highlight this issue and explore alternatives, we have created the Model Constraint and Query Language (MOCQL), an experimental declarative textual language to express queries (and constraints) on models. We introduce MOCQL by examples and its grammar, evaluate its usability by means of controlled experiments, and find that modelers perform better and experience less cognitive load when working with MOCQL than when working with OCL. While MOCQL is currently only implemented and validated for the different notations defined by UML, its concepts should be universally applicable.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark

    Harald Störrle

Authors
  1. Harald Störrle
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Industrial Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Pieter Van Gorp

  2. Fraunhofer FOKUS, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 31, 10589, Berlin, Germany

    Tom Ritter

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of York, Dearmore Lane, Heslington, AO10 5GH, York, UK

    Louis M. Rose

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Störrle, H. (2013). MOCQL: A Declarative Language for Ad-Hoc Model Querying. In: Van Gorp, P., Ritter, T., Rose, L.M. (eds) Modelling Foundations and Applications. ECMFA 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7949. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39013-5_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39013-5_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-39012-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-39013-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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