UML

Most books about UML describe it almost in its entirety. Inevitably you’re left with only a superficial knowledge of the range of UML elements, without a deep and intuitive understanding of how to apply UML as a whole to real world design problems. This book does not set out to cover all of UML, but instead pulls together those parts of UML with immediate practical relevance and presents them as part of a coherent process for using UML in your actual development projects.

This book is designed to be read while you work on a real project. After an initial review of the essentials of UML and the design process, it begins with the modeling of a business system and its business processes, in this case an airport.

Then the IT system intended to serve that business process is described and analysed. Finally the integration of the system into the production environment is covered in detail. The book can be used in two ways: it can be read through as a thorough grounding in how UML really works in practice; in addition it can be used as stand alone guide to that particular aspect of your own project. Both result in an intuitive understanding of how to actually use UML. What you will learn from this book:

Basic Principles and Background

Chapter introduces to the case study. The purpose of choosing a case study is to provide a coherent example through the chapters of this book. The chapter also explains several basic terms and concepts like models, views, diagrams, information systems, methods, and notations. The models and views provided by this book help choose the most suitable model for a requirement specification.

Much of what will be explained in the next chapters is based on a few fundamental concepts. These have been summarized in this chapter.

Modeling Business Systems

Chapter discusses the construction of business system models. It explains the benefits of the different views in a business system and discusses the elements of each view. It also provides instructions about how to construct use case diagrams.

Commercial IT systems are used mainly for dealing with business transactions of various sorts. Because of this, the development and integration of IT systems determine the views of those business processes that are embedded in the IT system. The business system model and its business processes serve as the basis for this. In this chapter we will discuss the construction of business system models.

Modeling IT Systems

Chapter illustrates how a conceptual model of an IT system can be developed with the help of UML.

Modeling is the foundation for successful development and implementation of new IT systems. A correct and complete model ensures that, in the end, users get the IT system they need. In this chapter, we show how a conceptual model of an IT system can be developed with the help of UML.

Modeling Systems Integration

Chapter describes the integration of the IT system into its environment. It discusses how to model the messages that are exchanged between the various IT systems, and the processes that are necessary to exchange these messages.

System Integration was long one of the least considered areas within information technology. Even though system integration has existed since the first two IT systems were connected by an interface, only in the last couple of years have standards for the fields of design, method, and implementation became established. This chapter illustrates how UML can be used to model messages and processes for the exchange of these messages.