8.7.1 Profiles in UML 2

The profile mechanism is a lightweight extension mechanism; it does not allow for modifying existing meta-classes or creating new, "first-class citizen" meta-classes in the UML metamodel. UML profiles can, in theory, be easily imported and exchanged between UML tools, and dynamically applied, combined, and retracted from a UML model.

The most prominent example of a UML profile is probably the Systems Modeling Language (SysML), maintained by the Object Management Group [OMG10]. SysML is an extension of the UML to better support systems engineering. Other profiles maintained by the OMG include MARTE (Modeling and Analysis of Real-time and Embedded Systems), UTP (UML Testing Profile), and SoaML (Service oriented architecture Modeling Language).

How are UML profiles relevant to design quality measurement?

If you extensively use profiles in your models, it is useful to define design metrics and rules that take profile extensions into account. A SysML model, for example, contains elements such "blocks", "requirements", or "test cases", and relationships between them such as "allocate", "refine", or "verify", all defined by the SysML profile. As a SysML user, you may therefore be interested in the number of blocks and requirements in the packages, measure the size of blocks in terms of their part-, reference-, and value-properties, define rules such as "requirements that are not further decomposed or refined must be verified by a test case", or create a relation matrix showing the allocation of activities to blocks.