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  1. OMG Issue

UML14 — UML 2.0 Superstructure: Operation vs. Attribute notation

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  • Key: UML14-132
  • Legacy Issue Number: 5951
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Zuehlke Engineering ( Frank Pilhofer)
  • Summary:

    For reference, my copy here is ad/03-04-01.

    I wonder about an inconsistency between the notations for attributes
    (section 1.8, page 41, in "Classifier (from Kernel, Dependencies,
    PowerTypes)") and operations (section 1.10, page 55, in "Operation
    (from Kernel)").

    For attributes, the notation is (slightly simplified)

    visibility name : type [multiplicity]

    {property-string}


    and for operations, it is


    visibility name (parameter-list) : property-string


    So in the case of attributes, a colon separates the name from the
    type, and the property-string is in curly braces, whereas for
    operations, the colon separates the name and signature from the
    property-string, which is not in braces.


    I think this discrepancy is counter-intuitive, I would expect the
    same atoms to be used in both blaces. I realize that the syntax for
    operations changed from UML 1.5 because of promoting the "return
    value" to a parameter.


    My suggestion is to change the notation for operations to


    visibility name (parameter-list) {property-string}

    i.e. to remove the colon, and to add braces around the property-
    string. This would be more consistent with both the attribute
    notation and the old UML 1.x notation.
  • Reported: UML 1.5 — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 04:00 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — UML 1.4.2
  • Disposition Summary:

    see above - resolved
  • Updated: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 20:58 GMT