A method for the definition of integrity constraints in object-oriented conceptual modeling languages

We propose a new method that eases the definition of integrity constraints in object-oriented conceptual modeling languages. The essence of the method is to represent constraints by special operations that we call constraint operations. The formal specification of these operations is the definition of the corresponding constraints. The method allows the specialization of constraints and the definition of exceptions. The main application of the method is for static constraints. However, a variant of it can also be applied for creation-time and deletion-time constraints, two particular classes of temporal constraints. The method can be adapted to any object-oriented language, and we show its adaptation to the UML. We also show that our method has several advantages over existing methods.