Issue 18505: UML 2.5 Beta 1 9.5.3 Qualifiers (uml25-ftf)
Source: Oracle (Mr. Dave Hawkins, dave.hawkins(at)oracle.com)
Nature: Revision
Severity: 
Summary: The description of qualifiers in section 9.5.3 is unclear.
I'm really struggling to understand it. The second paragraph
in particular seems to unnecessarily divide qualifiers by
the opposite end multiplicity. (In fact opposite ends, but
the opposite end is for binary associations only.) I have
no idea why this hints at implementation issues. Likewise
why does the note mention tables and indices? It shouldn't
be a note as it's a constraint on the multiplicity given
the qualifier values.


Here is an alternative explanation to replace all three
paragraphs:


A qualified Association end has qualifiers that partition
the instances associated with an instance at that end, the
qualified instance. Each partition is designated by a qualifier
value, which is a tuple comprising one value for each qualifier.
The multiplicities at the other ends of the association
determine the number of instances in each partition. So, for
example, 0..1 means there is at most one instance per qualifier
value. If the lower bounds are non-zero, the qualifier values
must be a finite set, for example, the qualifiers are typed by
enumerations.

Resolution: 
Revised Text: 
Actions taken:
February 26, 2013: received issue
Discussion: 

End of Annotations:=====
te: Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:39:24 +0000
From: Dave Hawkins <dave.hawkins@oracle.com>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686 on x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Thunderbird/17.0
To: "issues@omg.org" <issues@omg.org>
Subject: UML 2.5 Beta 1 9.5.3 Qualifiers
X-Source-IP: ucsinet21.oracle.com [156.151.31.93]
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at omg.org


The description of qualifiers in section 9.5.3 is unclear.
I'm really struggling to understand it. The second paragraph
in particular seems to unnecessarily divide qualifiers by
the opposite end multiplicity. (In fact opposite ends, but
the opposite end is for binary associations only.) I have
no idea why this hints at implementation issues. Likewise
why does the note mention tables and indices? It shouldn't
be a note as it's a constraint on the multiplicity given
the qualifier values.


Here is an alternative explanation to replace all three
paragraphs:


A qualified Association end has qualifiers that partition
the instances associated with an instance at that end, the
qualified instance. Each partition is designated by a qualifier
value, which is a tuple comprising one value for each qualifier.
The multiplicities at the other ends of the association
determine the number of instances in each partition. So, for
example, 0..1 means there is at most one instance per qualifier
value. If the lower bounds are non-zero, the qualifier values
must be a finite set, for example, the qualifiers are typed by
enumerations.


-- 
Dave Hawkins | Principal Software Engineer | +44 118 924 0022
Oracle JDeveloper Development
Oracle Corporation UK Ltd is a company incorporated in England & Wales.
Company Reg. No. 1782505.
Reg. office: Oracle Parkway, Thames Valley Park, Reading RG6 1RA.