Definition of the extensible environment API for OCL parsing and evaluation.

## Package Specification

This package defines the API for the environments in which OCL expressions are parsed and evaluated, along with the parser façade.

First, and most importantly to users of the OCL parser API, parsing of OCL documents is performed by the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.OCL} parser façade. OCL documents are provide as {@link org.eclipse.ocl.OCLInput} objects, obtaining their content from a string or a data stream. These documents declare constraints of the following forms in one or more classifier, operation, or property contexts (with optional package context declarations):

- invariant constraints (in classifier context)
- pre-condition, post-condition constraints, and body expressions (in operation context)
- initial value and derivation expressions (in property context)
- additional operation and property definitions (in classifier context)

These constraints are defined within the context of a particular `OCL` instance; thus the `OCL` defines a root environment. Disparate sets of constraints (including additional operations and properties) may be defined in multiple different `OCL`s. The constraints and {@link org.eclipse.ocl.expressions.OCLExpression}s parsed by an `OCL` may be checked (in the case of constraints) or evaluated (in the case of expressions) by the `OCL` on a context element, an instance of the metamodel supported by that `OCL`'s environment factory.

The {@link org.eclipse.ocl.helper.OCLHelper} interface provides a convenient API for parsing constraints and query expressions on a finer granularity than the document. It is particularly convenient for parsing end evaluating constraints that are embedded in models, in which the context is usually defined by the placement of the constraint. The OCL helper also provides content-assist (expression completion) facilities.

The {@link org.eclipse.ocl.Environment} interface describes the environment in which an OCL expression is parsed. The environment provides two major functions to the parser:

- Name resolution: the parser looks up in its current environment names that it finds in an expression. These include package, classifier, attribute, reference, operation, and variable names. Nested environments define nested scopes, to support shadowing of names (e.g., operation parameters or `let` variables that hide attributes of the context classifier)
- Tracking the context: the environment defines an optional package context, a mandatory classifier context, and (for feature constraints) an operation or property context. An feature context is implemented as a child environment of a classifier context; this allows for definition of constraints on operations in a different classifier context than the classifier that defines the operation
- Metamodel introspection: because the OCL parser API is generic, targeting any EMF-based metamodel that defines UML-like semantics, the environment API also provides the introspection facilities required by the parser to distinguish different kinds of classifiers, to determine the generalization relationships between them, obtain the types of properties, etc.

Environments are created by environment factories. An {@link org.eclipse.ocl.EnvironmentFactory} is provided to an {@link org.eclipse.ocl.OCL} to create environments when it needs to. Environment factories are the starting point for plugging an EMF-based metamodel into the parser framework. The environments that they create provide the bindings for the generic types representing the UML concepts required by OCL, and perform introspection of the particular metamodel. Abstract partial implementations of the factory and environment are provided and may be extended by clients to support their metamodels. Existing concrete implementations of the environment API may be found in the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.ecore} package (for the OCL binding to Ecore) and the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.uml} package (for the OCL binding to UML).

While the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.Environment} class provides a parse-time environment, the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.EvaluationEnvironment} keeps track of the current values of variables in the evaluation of an OCL expression. It also implements the metamodel-specific mechanisms for invoking operations, navigating properties, etc. The `EnvironmentFactory` is responsible for constructing `EvaluationEnvironment`s. For evaluating OCL constraints, the {@link org.eclipse.ocl.EvaluationVisitor} walks the AST (parsed representation of an OCL expression), using the evaluation environment to compute values. The {@link org.eclipse.ocl.AbstractEnvironmentFactory} creates a useful default implementation of the evaluation visitor, which supports any metamodel binding. The behavior of this default implementation may be modified as need by custom environment factories, by wrapping it with a custom visitor.

@see org.eclipse.ocl.OCL @see org.eclipse.ocl.EnvironmentFactory @see org.eclipse.ocl.Environment @see org.eclipse.ocl.helper