OCL25 — inclusion of Regular Expression support

The Object Constraint Language (OCL) is an integral part of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and is often used separately as a general constraint specification language in software development tools. For example, OCL is incorporated in the Generic Modeling Environment (GME) developed by the Institute of Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) of Vanderbilt University (http://www.isis.vanderbilt.edu/default.asp The GME implementation extends the OCL standard to include Regular Expressions. A Regular Expression is a pattern that describes (or matches) a set of strings where the pattern is itself a string and conforms to a specific syntax. Regular Expressions are ideal for expressing format constraints on OCL String values. Moreover, Regular Expressions are widely used, familiar to many software developers and complement the OCL’s already powerful constraint specification syntax. Unfortunately, Regular Expressions are not currently supported in OCL Version 2.0. Augmenting the OCL standard with Regular Expressions will improve OCL’s constraint specification capabilities for String values with a powerful, familiar notation and would also codify existing practice as manifested in tools such as GME. Please consider the inclusion of Regular Expression support in future releases of the Object Constraint Language (OCL) specification.