Hi Andrew > Does anyone know what it actually means to specialize an archetype? And what > the rules are?
The UML specification offers this definition for generalization: A taxonomic relationship between a more general element and a more specific element. The more specific element is fully consistent with the more general element and contains additional information. An instance of the more specific element may be used where the more general element is allowed I think that this is a fairly watertight definition and quite relevent to your question. > I looked at the archetype editor and created a specialized archetype of > another. The editor seemed to just copy the parent archetype and then > allowed the user to change anything about the archetype. > > For example, I can now make a mandatory field optional, or I can extend a > parent archetype with new mandatory fields that don't exist as optional > fields in the parent archetype By the UML definitions, these become "ill-formed" model. Of course, it's one thing to to state the definition, quite another to know how to compute whether a model is ill-formed. Grahame
