Ada and UML

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Hi all,

A few days ago I get to have a look back at UML after a topic linking to  
an assessment stating graphical representations may help in  
design/application validation. Someone argued there is a lack of semantic  
with UML which dismiss its usage ; one topic I agree on, and after some  
reading to be sure, it seems indeed, there does not have a clearly defined  
semantic (*)

Another topic I oftenly read/heard about Ada and UML, is that it is too  
much oriented toward Java/C++, lacking as an example, handling of class  
and package orthogonality which is typical of Ada.

I've just discovered today it seems there is a kind of package visibility  
with UML expression of classes, which could match Ada concept of package:  
the visibility modifier “~” (the Tilde sign) which seems to means “Private  
at package level”. This should be sufficient for Ada. Nevertheless, there  
is nothing like “friend” or “protected” in Ada, as visibility is only  
handled by packages, so this visibility modifiers could just be  
disallowed. Do you think “~” is OK to express visibility handled by  
packages ?

For you who tried Ada and UML, did you noticed some others unsolvable  
matters to express Ada package in UML ?


(*) TBH, some peoples with interests in UML was aware of that, started  
some research on 1997 to draw a formal definition of the UML semantic, but  
any research in that area seemed to end on 2004, without any successful  
completion.

P.S. As the purpose of UML is clearly underspecification, may be the  
question of this thread does not really matters, as Ada is acting at  
implementation level.