Chapter 6 Checking

Introduction

One advantage of doing design work online is that you can check your models using the UML suite's checking utilities. These utilities can help you find errors and inconsistencies in your design, minimizing the risk of expensive design flaws.

Three types of checking

The UML suite provides three types of checking:

• Implicit checking is done whenever you use the diagram editors. Implicit checking ensures that your diagrams are always syntactically correct by preventing you from creating invalid objects or connections.
• Explicit checking occurs when you click a Check menu. You can check individual diagrams or ensure that a set of diagrams are complete. Explicit checking is particularly useful for code generation, ensuring that the Class Diagrams (CDs) are complete and correct.
• Code generation checking is done as part of code generation to minimize errors.

This chapter describes each type of checking and how to use explicit checking.

Customized checking

Tcl scripts define all checking that the UML suite performs. You can implement your own checks by modifying these scripts or by creating your own. For details on customizing checking, see Chapter 12, Customizing Checking, in The UML Suite Customization Guide.