A formal or informal specification of an agreement between a provider and a consumer that specifies the rights and obligations associated with a product and establishes functional and non-functional parameters for interaction. The contract element may be used to model a contract in the legal sense, but also a more informal agreement associated with a product. It may also be or include a Service-Level Agreement (SLA), describing an agreement about the functionality and quality of the services that are part of a product. A contract is a specialization of a business object. The name of a contract is preferably a noun.