Response to Jiau et al.'s comments

The consistency problems in UML models and related software processes can be very complex. First, although UML supports a modeling process that should yield inter and intraconsistent models, the meaning of the UML dependencies and their specializations is not precisely defined and, for this reason, many inconsistencies may appear in their models and processes. Precise definitions would form a basis for methods to detect and analyze consistency problems related to UML dependencies and relationships, as well as problems related to software processes described in UML. In addition, we are using the UML object constraint language (OCL) to describe constraints related to the framework instantiation process. OCL is recognized as a limited language in some aspects for expressing well-formedness rules. We have presented a method (T.C. Oliveira et al., 2004) that works in the case of consistent rules and consistent instantiation processes.