Generating UML models from domain patterns

The development of a family of applications in a domain can be greatly eased if patterns in the domain are systematically reused. Systematic use of such patterns can be achieved by tools that support the specification of patterns and their instantiation in a specific application context. In this paper, we present a prototype tool called RBML-Pattern Instantiator (RBML-PI) that generates application-specific UML class diagrams and sequence diagrams from a pattern specification described in the Role-Based Metamodeling Language (RBML), a pattern specification language defining a domain-specific sub-language of the UML. We give an overview of the RBML using the Visitor design pattern, and demonstrate the tool using an RBML specification for the CheckIn-CheckOut (CICO) domain pattern that specifies services to check in and check out items. We use the CICO pattern specification to generate an application-specific UML model of a library system using RBML-PI.