From Core OCL Invariants to Nested Graph Constraints

Meta-modeling including the use of the Object Constraint Language (OCL) forms a well-established approach to design domainspecific modeling languages. This approach is purely declarative in the sense that instance construction is not needed and not considered. In contrast, graph grammars allow the stepwise construction of instances by the application of transformation rules. In this paper, we consider meta-models with Core OCL invariants and translate them to nested graph constraints for typed attributed graphs. Models and meta-models are translated to instance and type graphs. We show that a model satisfies a Core OCL invariant iff its corresponding instance graph satisfies the corresponding nested graph constraint. The aim of this work is to establish a first formal relation between meta-modeling and the theory of graph transformation including constraints to come up with an integrated approach for defining modeling languages in an optimal way in the future.