Specifying Agent Interaction Protocols with Standard UML

The main purpose of this paper is to present knowledge-based Enterprise model (EM) sufficiency as data repository for Unified Modelling Language (UML) models generation. UML models are one of the most usable modelling languages in system lifecycle design stage, despite the problem domain of the system. UML models can be generated from Enterprise Model by using particular transformation algorithms presented in previous researches. Generation process from Enterprise model is represented by certain Hospital Information Management process example. Generated UML dynamic Use Case, Activity, Sequence and State models of different perspectives of Hospital Information Management process prove sufficiency of stored information in Enterprise model.

Unified Modeling Language (UML) has emerged as the software industry’s dominant modeling language. It is the de facto modeling language standard for specifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting the components of software systems. Despite its prominence and status as the standard modeling language, UML has its critics. Opponents argue that it is complex and difficult to learn. Some question the rationale of having nine diagramming techniques in UML and the raison d’être of those nine techniques in UML. Others point out that UML lacks a comprehensive methodology to guide its users, which makes the language even more convoluted. A few studies on UML can be found in the literature. However, no study exists to provide a quantitative measure of UML complexity or to compare UML with other object-oriented techniques. In this research, we evaluate the complexity of UML using complexity metrics. The objective is to provide a reliable and accurate quantitative measure of UML complexity. A comparison of the complexity metrical values of UML with other object-oriented techniques was also carried out. Our findings suggest that each diagram in UML is not distinctly more complex than techniques in other modeling methods. But as a whole, UML is very complex–2-11 times more complex than other modeling methods.

Unified Modeling Language (UML) has emerged as the software industry’s dominant modeling language. It is the de facto modeling language standard for specifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting the components of software systems. Despite its prominence and status as the standard modeling language, UML has its critics. Opponents argue that it is complex and difficult to learn. Some question the rationale of having nine diagramming techniques in UML and the raison d’être of those nine techniques in UML. Others point out that UML lacks a comprehensive methodology to guide its users, which makes the language even more convoluted. A few studies on UML can be found in the literature. However, no study exists to provide a quantitative measure of UML complexity or to compare UML with other object-oriented techniques. In this research, we evaluate the complexity of UML using complexity metrics. The objective is to provide a reliable and accurate quantitative measure of UML complexity. A comparison of the complexity metrical values of UML with other object-oriented techniques was also carried out. Our findings suggest that each diagram in UML is not distinctly more complex than techniques in other modeling methods. But as a whole, UML is very complex–2-11 times more complex than other modeling methods.

In this chapter, we provide the essential theory and practical details of employing the principles of Object Orientation (OO) in system architecture modeling. We do not attempt to provide an exhaustive OO tutorial, since there exists a very large literature on this subject (see the references to this chapter). Our goal, instead, is to give the reader the level of understanding needed to master the MBSAP methodology and apply it to practical system architecting challenges. First, we present the rationale for OO and define the essential concepts and terminology, stressing the benefits it delivers in dealing with complex entities. Although we use the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) as the basis for this book, we begin by discussing and illustrating the primary diagrams of the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which is the root language standard for OO. This is then followed by a description of the changes to UML introduced by the SysML, which is defined as a Profile of UML. The reality is that a large part of the SysML is taken directly from the UML language specification. We believe understanding of this material is enhanced by first considering the parent UML and then explicitly showing how UML modifies and extends the language. We include generic UML and SysML diagrams that illustrate important principles and syntax and that can serve as format samples in developing real architecture models. Appendices A and B are concise references to UML and SysML, respectively, intended to give readers a quick and easy way to look up the details. Chapter objective: the reader will be able to create and read UML and SysML diagrams and to describe the role of each.

Software product line (SPL) is a software engineering paradigm for software development. A software product within a product line often has specific functionalities that are not common to all other products within the product line. Those specific functionalities are termed “variant features” in a product line. SPL paradigm involves the modeling of variant features. However, little work in SPL investigates and addresses the modeling of variant features specific to user interface (UI). Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the de facto modeling language for object-oriented software systems. It is known that UML needs better support in modeling UIs. Thus, much research developed UML extensions to improve UML support in modeling UIs. Yet little of this work is related to developing such extensions for modeling UIs for SPLs in which variant features specific to UI modeling must be addressed. This research develops a UML extension -Web User Interface Modeling Language (WUIML) to address these problems. WUIML defines elements for modeling variant features specific to user interfaces for Web-based SPLs. The model elements in WUIML extend from the metaclass and BasicActivity of the UML2.0 metamodel. WUIML integrates the modeling of variant features specific to user interfaces to UML. For example, in a Web-based patient registration software product line, member products targeting British users may use British date format in the user interface, while member products targeting United States users may use United States date format in the user interface. Thus, this is a variant feature for this product line. WUIML defines a model element, XOR, to represent such exclusive or conditions in a product line user interface model. WUIML would reduce SPL engineers’ efforts needed in UI development. To validate the WUIML research outcome, a case study was conducted. The results of this empirical study indicate that modeling UIs for Web-based SPLs using WUIML is more effective and efficient than using standard UML.

The unified modeling language (UML) is one of the most commonly used modeling languages in the software industry. It simplifies the complex process of design by providing a set of graphical notations, which helps express the objectoriented analysis and design of software projects. Although UML is applicable to different types of systems, domains, methods, and processes, it cannot express certain problem domain needs. Therefore, many extensions to UML have been proposed. In this paper, we propose a framework for integrating the UML extensions and then use the framework to propose an integrated unified modeling language-graphical (iUML-g) form. iUML-g integrates the existing UML extensions into one integrated form. This includes an integrated diagram for UML class, sequence, and use case diagrams. The proposed approach is evaluated using a case study. The proposed iUML-g is capable of modeling systems that use different domains.

Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been widely accepted in the software engineering area, because it provides most of the concepts and notations that are essential for documenting object-oriented models. However, UML does not have an explicit format to describe and interchange its model information intentionally. This paper addresses the UML model interchange and presents our efforts to make UML highly interoperable. We developed an interchange format called UXF (UML eXchange Format) based on XML (Extensible Markup Language). UXF is a simple and well-structured format to encode UML models. It leverages the tool interoperability, team development and reuse of design models by interchanging the model information with the the XML standard. Also, we propose an open distribution platform for UML models, which provides multiple levels of interoperability of UML models. Our work shows an important step in the evolution for the interoperable UML.

Unified Modeling Language (UML) plays an important role in the modern software development process by offering standardized methods for visual modeling, analysis, and design of complex systems. This paper discusses the main aspects of storing, editing, and integrating UML documents with integrated development environments (IDEs). The main focus is on comparing the two main formats for storing UML models – XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). XMI, being an official standard developed by Object Management Group, provides a high degree of detail and compatibility with various UML tools, making it preferable for large and complex projects that require support for the full UML specification. At the same time, JSON is simple and flexible, which makes it suitable for projects where speed of development and ease of integration are important, although it is inferior to XMI in describing complex aspects of UML models. The paper analyzes in detail the methods of editing UML documents, including manual editing and automated approaches, using APIs and scripts. Manual editing is useful when you need to make small changes to the structure of a UML document, but it can be time-consuming and error-prone when working with large projects. Automation, on the other hand, provides effective tools for mass editing and generating UML elements, which significantly speeds up development and minimizes the likelihood of errors, especially since modern tools such as StarUML offer the necessary tools for programmatically modifying UML documents by integrating them into development processes. Combining of UML documents with integrated development environments also plays a key role in increasing development efficiency, as this allows automating code generation based on UML models, maintaining synchronization between code and diagrams, and facilitating visualization and documentation of architectural solutions. Despite the significant advantages, there are challenges associated with limited support for all UML features and potential conflicts between models and code. This only emphasizes the need for further research in this area. Prospects for further research include the development of new methods and tools for working with UML documents, improving their integration with development environments, and using artificial intelligence to automate the analysis and design of UML models. Attention should also be paid to the using of UML with continuous integration processes, which can significantly increase the flexibility and adaptability of software development. Thus, the study of the structure of storing, editing, and integrating UML documents is an important area for optimizing the design and development of modern software systems.

As a powerful and object-oriented graphical modeling language, Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been introduced into the design and development of safety-critical computer systems. However, UML model is difficult to reflect the concurrency and consistency of constraint rules between objects and impossible to completely demonstrate the dynamic behavior characteristics of a system. Further, it cannot be directly expressed and analyzed by mathematical tools. Petri net modeling technology uses graphical element place and transition to clearly describe the internal interactions of a system. Meanwhile, Petri net has mature mathematical analysis methods. We have proposed to combine these two tools for designing and analyzing a system with a set of transformation rules from UML statecharts to Petri net. In this paper, an automatic conversion tool is introduced. The tool performs the transformation with three steps as follows: (1) Transforming UML model into XML document, which makes information extraction of the UML model become easier. (2) Analyzing semantics of UML model and Petri net model, then designing data structure for transformation, and completing the transformation based on the transformation rules. (3) Analyzing the transformed Petri net model to verify the characteristics of the UML model. The transformation rules and the tools are developed based on a new railway interlocking system.

The Web Services Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL) is a specification developed by the W3C and can be viewed as a blueprint for the development of end-point services. Consequently, it is worth providing a systematic approach for its modeling, analysis and verification. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is an industry standard for modeling. Applying UML to model WS-CDL is obviously a promising solution to bring together academics and practitioners through a unique standard language. In this paper, we propose to use different UML diagrams to model WS-CDL. UML Component Diagram is used to model the underlying structure of WS-CDL. UML Sequence Diagram is utilized to model the activities in WS-CDL. UML State Machine Diagram is utilized to model the behaviors of each role participating in a WS-CDL specification. We then enrich the UML State Machine Diagram with data by the use of UML Class Diagram. Given the UML specification of WS-CDL, we then provide a systematic way of formally analyzing and verifying WS-CDL against desired properties. Some experiments show that our approach can verify structural, behavioral and data properties in a middle-scale data-enriched WS-CDL specification.

To most in the software community, "modeling" is drawing pictures, something much different than "coding". While programming languages must be specified precisely enough to be executable, this has not necessarily been the case for modeling languages. Indeed, the well-known Unified Modeling Language (UML) has for years had a specification that is far from precise. However, precise models are quite common in other engineering disciplines, and there has been a minority even in software engineering that have created models that are precise enough to be, themselves, executable. Over the last decade, the UML community has more generally come to realize the benefits of having at least a subset of UML specified with precise execution semantics. While not all models need to be executable, executable models can support early testing and analysis of the design of critical software systems, as well as supporting simulation for communities using UML for modeling beyond just software (such as SysML for systems engineering). As a result, there has been a great deal of work in recent years toward the standardization of precise, executable semantics for UML models - the "meaning" behind the pictures: Foundational UML (fUML), the Action Language for fUML (Alf) and the recently completed Precise Semantics for UML Composite Structures. These new specifications provide the promise of widespread support for executable modeling across the many UML tools now on the market.

The UML (Unified Modeling Language), with the enhancements in UML 2.0, is receiving interest by an increasing number of industrial and academic groups from the EDA, embedded software and hardware systems, who look at it and at its extension mechanisms as a practical and standard means to define family of languages targeted to specific application domains and levels of abstraction, while providing unification. In the Embedded Systems and SoC (System-on-Chip) area, we defined a model-driven design methodology based on UML 2.0, UML profiles and C/C++/SystemC. In this paper, we extend this design flow in order to support the platform-based design principles. We also present the architecture of a prototype tool, which provides a graphical representation in UML (from a highlevel functional model down to RTL) of hardware and software components, C/C++/SystemC code generation from UML models, and a reverse engineering process from C/C++/SystemC code to UML models.

The Unified Modelling Language (UML) is a language for specifying, visualising, constructing and documenting software systems. The UML proved to be extremely successful and it has achieved tremendous popularity making it the de facto industry standard for object oriented system development. As such, many researchers presented empirical studies on the practical usage of UML but as well criticisms for UML complexity, difficulty to be learnt, etc. Even though a large number of articles and books are devoted to various aspects of UML language, there is little evidence on how UML is used. This study attempts to identify the profile of persons using UML, to pinpoint UML diagrams that are being used and their effectiveness, to discover whether CASE tools are being used and to record the perceived usefulness of UML language. For conducting the study a survey was developed and it was distributed to mailing lists of Greek IT professionals and to university students. The findings indicate that UML is used successfully in the majority of software development projects and that most users perceive UML positively since it supports faster system building, development of higher quality software systems, and for specific cases, it leads to software development cost‐decrease.

We have developed an OWL ontology for the geologic timescale, derived from a Unified Modeling Language (UML) model that formalized the practice of the International Commission for Stratigraphy (ICS) (Cox and Richard 2005). The UML model followed the ISO/TC 211 modeling conventions, and was the basis for an XML implementation that was integrated into GeoSciML 3.0. The OWL ontology is derived using rules for generating OWL ontologies from ISO-conformant UML models, as provided in a (draft) standard from ISO/TC 211. The basic ontology is also aligned with SKOS to allow multilingual labels, and to enable delivery through a standard vocabulary interface. All versions of the International Stratigraphic Chart from 2004 to 2014 have been encoded using the ontology. Following ICS practice, the elements of the timescale retain the same identifiers across the multiple versions, though the information describing each geochronologic unit evolves with the versions of the timescale. The timescales are published through multiple web interfaces and APIs.

Business process analysis and modeling is a crucial step in formulating information systems user requirements. The practice of information technology (IT) development does not indicate a lack of problems in spite of the growing number of modeling techniques. This article gives an action research account of formulating and applying a new business process modeling framework to manufacturing processes to guide software development. It is based on a combination of soft systems methodology (SSM) and the Unified Modeling Language (UML) business process modeling extensions suggested by Eriksson and Penker. SSM has been linked to information systems provision in the past. The examination of prior research shows that there is no underlying reasoning about the justification from a methodological point of view of the combination of SSM and UML. This article justifies the mixing of SSM and Eriksson and Penker’s UML extensions using the ideas of Mingers’ Multimethodology. The latter helps to overcome the ontological complexities of combining soft and hard techniques in a single intervention. The proposed framework was applied to modeling the production process in an aluminum rolling plant as a step in the development of a new information system for it. The reflections on the intervention give details on how actual learning and appreciation is facilitated using SSM, leading to better UML models in this complex problem.