ALF11 — NamespaceDefinition::member type

Subclause: 15.2.15 NamespaceDefinition

It would be better if NamespaceDefinition::member had type ElementReference instead of Member, to account for members inherited from non-Alf UML elements.

Use the existing ImportedMember instead

It is agreed that there is an issue in that members inherited from external classifiers are not currently addressed explicitly. While changing the type of NamespaceDefinition to ElementReference might be a consistent way to use the general element referencing mechanism to do that, it represents a substantial change to the abstract syntax model. It would also require updating how imported members are handled and introducing a mechanism for consistently accessing member properties through general element references.

An alternative is to simply use the existing ImportedMember class also for referencing external members that are inherited (i.e., they are first "implicitly imported"). This may be less elegant as an overall design, but it requires no change to the abstract syntax model and is thus a much smaller change while still solving the problem. It would also automatically handle checks for distinguishability with inherited members, since such checks are already covered for imported members.