DDS4CCM11 — Use of symbolic constant as string or sequence bound

Page 47 beneath Figure 8.13 contains:

The extended UML metamodel contains an abstract stereotype <<CORBATemplate>>, which is a generalization of <<CORBAString>>, <<CORBAWstring>>, and <<CORBASequence>> stereotypes. All <<CORBATemplate>> elements have a tag “bound” that indicates the maximum size of the element.

Page 48 CORBASequence contains:

Sequences are represented in the Profile by two means:

• Named by a typedef declaration sequences are represented by the UML DataType with the stereotype <<CORBASequence>>. Sequence members are represented by an attribute of the DataType, which always has the name “members” (profile keyword), members type is represented by the type of the “members”-attribute and the max size is represented by the multiplicity of the “members”-attribute.
  [...]

Thus there appear to be two mechanisms for specifying the string/sequence bound,

• either via the «CORBAString» / «CORBASequence» stereotype tag bound
• or via the typedef-datatype attribute members multiplicity upper bound

I propose following clarification:

When defining a bounded string or a bounded sequence,
* If the bound value is a plain number, the multiplicity upper bound of the "members" attribute shall be used for carrying the bound number.
* If the bound is a symbolic constant then the stereotype tag "bound" shall be used. It shall carry the fully qualified name of the IDL constant.

Reason:
Use of attribute multiplicity for the symbolic constant representing the string/sequence bound is problematic.
Most UML tools do not support such symbols in the UML attribute multiplicity expression.

Consider the following IDL:

module config {
   const short max_size = 8;
};
module types {
   typedef string<config::max_size> name_t;
   typedef sequence<boolean, config::max_size> bool_seq_t;
};

Here, in both cases the multiplicity of the members attribute shall not be used. Instead, the stereotype tag bound shall contain "config::max_size"
for the typedef-datatypes.