Consistency checking of UML models using Description Logics: A critical review

Software design is often modeled as a collection of UML diagrams. Different UML diagrams depicting overlapping behaviour of the system, refinement of models and the evolving nature of software, may lead to inconsistencies in UML diagrams. Inconsistencies in the software model specification might result in the development of incoherent and conflicting system. Current UML tools provide unsatisfactory support for maintaining the consistency between UML diagrams. To identify the inconsistencies and conflicts in UML models, formal languages such as Description Logics (DL) have proved to be useful. This paper evaluates the existing DL based approaches to UML consistency checking. Our analysis shows that the existing DL based approaches are automated, but cover only a limited subset of UML diagrams and inconsistency types.