MOF14 — MOF 1.3 Why prevent nonpublic Associations?

In the MOF 1.3 Specification, constraint C-37 requires Associations to be
public. Support for nonpublic Associations is a valuable capability that
should not be forbidden. In particular, when there are references on all
navigable ends of an Association, the M1 Association object is fully
redundant in the capabilities it provides. Making the Association private
or protected eliminates the need to support redundant public interfaces for
capabilities available most conveniently through references. The
association is an important part of the model in that it defines the
semantics and behavior of the references, but no public Association
interface is needed. The IDL and other interfaces generated from metamodels
is already too large. Constraint C-37 simply makes it larger than it needs
to be.

Note that the CWM submitters to OMG desire to use nonpublic associations
extensively in CWM's 26 metamodels.

Recommendation: Delete C-37.