Common use of Decomposition Clause in Contracts

Decomposition. Decomposition is a relation describing of what smaller parts a larger part consists and is here called “contains”, while the inverse is called “contained by”. Because of decomposition, the larger part can be considered a (decomposition) set of the smaller parts linked through decomposition and some additional unknown part as well. Similar to instantiation, a larger part can contain several smaller parts and a smaller part can also be part of several larger things. There can however be exceptions to this, depending on where the decomposition is applied. Also, the structure created through decomposition should form a directed acyclic graph, meaning that loops in decomposition are not allowed. Decomposition is generally described using the AND-inclusion type. However, variability can be achieved in some cases by also using different ones. For example, when describing products, the OR- and XOR-inclusion types can be used to denote the potential for customisability. In addition to the inclusion types the decomposition relation can also be marked as separable or inseparable. An inseparable decomposition indicates that the larger must contain the smaller, while with a separable relation the smaller part is considered optional. Having a separable contains relation to a smaller thing is the same as a contains relation to a decomposition set of XOR-inclusion type that itself contains the smaller thing and an empty set (see Figure 3).