Editing Object Constraint Language (section)

== Description ==
OCL is a descendant of [[Syntropy (Software)|Syntropy]], a second-generation object-oriented analysis and design method. The OCL 1.4 definition specified a constraint language. In OCL 2.0, the definition has been extended to include general object query language definitions.<ref name="FOLDOC">{{foldoc|Object+Constraint+Language}}</ref>

OCL statements are constructed in four parts:

# a context that defines the limited situation in which the statement is valid 
# a property that represents some characteristics of the context (e.g., if the context is a class, a property might be an attribute)
# an operation (e.g., arithmetic, set-oriented) that manipulates or qualifies a property, and 
# keywords (e.g., if, then, else, and, or, not, implies) that are used to specify conditional expressions.