Advanced visual modelling: beyond UML

ABSTRACT

With the adoption of UML by the OMG and industry as the linguae-francae of visual systems modelling, one begins to ponder what will come next in this field? This tutorial brings a vision for visual modelling beyond UML. We present and consolidate radical new notations, proposed in a series of research papers and with quickly increasing adoption by industry, for the specification of complex systems in an intuitive visual, yet precise manner. The recurring theme of these notations is the upgrading of familiar diagrams into a powerful visual language. Spider diagrams considerably extend Venn-diagrams to the specification of OO-systems. Most familiar OO-concepts are translated to set theoretical terms: class into set of objects, inheritance corresponding to subset, and even Harel's statecharts interpreted as the set of objects in that state. Constraint diagrams enhance the arrow notation to describe static system invariants which cannot be described by UML class-object diagram. Reasoning rules are developed for the notation and strong completeness results are given. Finally, 3D-diagrams show how the third dimension and VRML modelling can be used for a conceptual modelling of dynamic system behaviour. Much of the tutorial will be based on a case study developed in industry, illustrating how the new notations are combined with those of UML, including OCL.Highlights include:• A crash critical overview in UML, stressing its weaknesses and strengths,• A rich visual constraint language and an insight into subtle issues that arise when defining a visual language, for applying the popular design-by-contract using a visual formalism• A discussion of diagrammatic reasoning with the notation, including completeness results• A case study• A demonstration of a graphical editor for the constraint-diagrams language• A look to the future of visual modelling, including ideas about 3D modelling notations and visual modelling tools.

REFERENCES

• 1: Joseph Gil , Stuart Kent, Three dimensional software modelling, Proceedings of the 20th international conference on Software engineering, p.105-114, April 19-25, 1998, Kyoto, Japan
• 2: Joseph Gil , Stuart Kent, Three dimensional software modelling, Proceedings of the 20th international conference on Software engineering, p.105-114, April 19-25, 1998, Kyoto, Japan
• 3: Joseph (Yossi) Gil , John Howse , Stuart Kent, Formalizing Spider Diagrams, Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, p.130, September 13-16, 1999
• 4: Joseph (Yossi) Gil , John Howse , Stuart Kent, Constraint Diagrams: A Step Beyond UML, Proceedings of the Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems, p.453, August 01-05, 1999
• 5: Ali Hamie , Franco Civello , John Howse , Stuart Kent , Richard Mitchell, Reflections on the Object Constraint Language, Selected papers from the First International Workshop on The Unified Modeling Language «UML»'98: Beyond the Notation, p.162-172, June 03-04, 1998
• 6: Hamie A., Howse J. and Kent S. (1998a) Navigation Expressions in OO Modelling, Procs. of FASE98 at ETAPS98, Springer Verlag.
• 7: Hamie A., Howse J. and Kent S. (1998c) Modular Semantics for Object-Oriented Models, Procs. of Asia Pacific Conference in Software Engineering, IEEE Press.
• 8: John Howse , Fernando Molina , John Taylor , Stuart Kent, Reasoning with Spider Diagrams, Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, p.138, September 13-16, 1999
• 9: Stuart Kent, Constraint diagrams: visualizing invariants in object-oriented models, Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, p.327-341, October 05-09, 1997, Atlanta, Georgia, United States
• 10: Kent S. and Gil Y. (1998) Visualising Action Contracts in OO Modelling, IEE Proc.-Software, Vol. 145, No2-3, April-June.
• 11: Stuart Kent , Ali Hamie , John Howse , Franco Civello , Richard Mitchell, Semantics Through Pictures, Proceedings of the Workshops on Object-Oriented Technology, p.182-187, June 09-13, 1997
• 12: Kent S. and Howse J. (1999) Mixing Visual and Textual Constraint Languages, Proc. UML99.
• 13: Kent S., Howse J. and Lauder A. (1998) Modelling Components, in Procs. International Workshop on Large-Scale Software Composition at DEXA98, IEEE Press.
• 14: Anthony Lauder , Stuart Kent, Precise Visual Specification of Design Patterns, Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, p.114-134, July 20-24, 1998

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: UML

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.6 SIMULATION AND MODELING
      I.6.8 Types of Simulation
          Subjects: Combined; Visual

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Performance