Modeling software with object-oriented technique and Unified Modeling Language (UML) has become the new paradigm of modern information systems analysis and design. Selonen et al. (2003) proposed a framework for transformation within UML. However, they do not precisely define the operations and the rules they use. This research presents a systematic method which enhances Selonen et al.¡¦s work to transform the sequence diagram into the class diagram. The transformation process consists of three phases: (1) mapping the given sequence diagram to a notation-independent and semantically equivalent minimal model, (2) transforming the minimal model of the sequence diagram into the minimal model of a class diagram, and (3) mapping the minimal model to a class diagram. A real-world case is used to illustrate the concepts, application, and the advantages of using the proposed method. With this approach, the system developer can transform sequence diagram into class diagram automatically and thereby enhance the efficiency of system development.

Today, modeling the software with unified modeling language (UML) and computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tool becomes the main stream for the objected-oriented systems analysis and design. To enhance the degree of ransformation automation and reuse in the system development process, prior research suggested that most parts of the class diagram can be transformed from the sequence diagram directly. However, the explicit guideline for the transformation is lacking. This study presents a methodology, extended from Selonen et al (2003), to transform the sequence diagram into the class diagram. A real-world case using the integrated techniques is presented to illustrate the concepts, application, and the advantages of using the proposed approach. With this approach, the system developer can transform most parts of the sequence diagram into its associated class diagram automatically and thereby enhance the efficiency of system development.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has quickly become the industry standard for object-oriented software development. It is being widely used in organizations and institutions around the world. However, UML is often found to be too complex for novice systems analysts. Although prior research has identified difficulties novice analysts encounter in learning UML, no viable solution has been proposed to address these difficulties. Sequence-diagram modeling, in particular, has largely been overlooked. The sequence diagram models the behavioral aspects of an object-oriented software system in terms of interactions among its building blocks, i.e. objects and classes. It is one of the most commonly-used UML diagrams in practice. However, there has been little research on sequence-diagram modeling. The current literature scarcely provides effective guidelines for developing a sequence diagram. Such guidelines will be greatly beneficial to novice analysts who, unlike experienced systems analysts, do not possess relevant prior experience to easily learn how to develop a sequence diagram. There is the need for an effective sequence-diagram modeling technique for novices. This dissertation reports a research study that identified novice difficulties in modeling a sequence diagram and proposed a technique called CHOP (CHunking, Ordering, Patterning), which was designed to reduce the cognitive load by addressing the cognitive complexity of sequence-diagram modeling. The CHOP technique was evaluated in a controlled experiment against a technique recommended in a well-known textbook, which was found to be representative of approaches provided in many textbooks as well as practitioner literatures. The results indicated that novice analysts were able to perform better using the CHOP technique. This outcome seems have been enabled by pattern-based heuristics provided by the technique. Meanwhile, novice analysts rated the CHOP technique more useful although not significantly easier to use than the control technique. The study established that the CHOP technique is an effective sequence-diagram modeling technique for novice analysts.

No description available.

The main goal of testing is to find errors in the System Under Test (SUT). Prior research indicated that Model-Based Testing is indeed good at finding SUT errors, can lead to less time and effort spent on testing if the time needed to write and maintain the model plus the time spent on directing the test generation is less than the cost of manually designing and maintaining a test suite. This study proposed a methodology for Model-Based Testing. In this approach, Sequence Diagrams and Class Diagram are used to determine the testing path and test case and Object Constraint Language is used to specify the business logic constraint. Three real-world cases and a CASE tool are used to test the usability (including the concepts, application, and advantages) of the proposed methodology. With this approach, SUT errors can be found at the systems analysis and design stage and thereby reduce the cost of software testing and enhance the efficiency of system development.

Darbo tikslas – pagerinti UML kalbą naudojančius projektavimo procesus, papildant juos sekų ir būsenų diagramų derinimo galimybėmis, praplėsti UML specifikaciją, kad būtų įmanomas abipusis sekų diagramų ir būsenų mašinų transformavimas. Antrame darbo skyriuje pateikti keli literatūroje pasiūlyti sekų diagramų transformavimo į būsenų mašinas algoritmai ir transformacijų pavyzdžiai. Skyriaus gale pateikta šių algoritmų palyginimo lentelė pagal tam tikras savybes bei keleto CASE įrankių, kuriuose galėtų būti įgyvendinti algoritmai, apžvalga. Trečiame skyriuje pateikta abipusės sekų ir būsenų diagramų transformacijos metodika. Ketvirtame skyriuje pateiktas pagal trečio skyriaus metodiką atliktos sekų ir būsenų diagramų transformacijų realizacijos projektas praplečiant MagicDraw UML įrankį. Penktame skyriuje pateiktas sukurto įskiepio efektyvumo tyrimas bei transformacijų pavyzdžiai. Šeštame skyriuje pateiktos bendros darbo išvados. / In this master thesis the transformation from sequence diagrams to statemachines and vice versa is presented. The first section describes a research of four existing algorithms of generating state machines from sequence diagrams. For diagrams transformation plug-in for CASE tool MagicDraw is created according MDA standards. Transformation plug-in takes sequence (state) diagram model as input and generates state (sequence) diagrams according to transformation sules. Created plug-in requirements,functional specification and architecture described in Project section. The investigation section describes investigation of the developed plug-in. In this section were investigate the working efficiency of designer trying to reconcile model diagrams.

The Unified Modelling Language (UML) and object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) have become essential topics in both academia and industry. UML is the accepted standard modelling language for describing object-oriented (OO) systems for analysis and design, and many UML CASE tools have been built and are used in academia and industry. OO technology and UML is an ongoing area of research, and many applications have been developed using OO technology. However, observations on current software development practices in some computer companies have shown that many OO software developers are not adopting recognised OOAD techniques. Both information technology (IT) students at higher educational institutions and professionals have in general found difficulty in grasping OO concepts, and the role that UML diagrams play in the design of the analysis and design solution. They particularly find difficulty in performing abstractions of real-world problems within the context of OOAD. They are unable to effectively build class diagrams from the problem domain because they essentially do not know ‘what’ to model. They therefore prefer to start coding software applications before building the analysis and design artifacts. Most of these students invariably prefer to focus on the implementation phase of a software development lifecycle and consider the preceding analysis and design phases superfluous. The overall goal of this thesis is to contribute to a significant improvement in the way students and software developers analyse and design their OO systems. We present a new approach by introducing concept mapping as a tool to help novices in OOAD produce more appropriate UML class and sequence diagrams. The class and sequence diagrams are selected because they represent the essential static and behavioural aspects of a problem domain. The former is fundamental to the OO modelling process and the latter is one of the most widely used dynamic diagrams in UML. Concept mapping is a popular tool used in education for facilitating learning, comprehension and the development of knowledge. Within the context of OOAD, we propose to use concept maps as a graphical representation of fundamental concepts, and their relationships and responsibilities within a problem domain. A static concept map derived from expanded use cases (use case narratives) can subsequently evolve into a class diagram containing information on classes, attributes, associations and generalisation-specialisation hierarchies. A dynamic concept map derived from an expanded use case can evolve into a sequence diagram containing information on the interaction of objects (and their messages) to fulfil the responsibilities of a particular scenario of the use case. In this thesis, a study is initially conducted to investigate in detail the difficulties undergraduate students have when producing UML class and sequence diagrams. The results of the study reveal and confirm some of the fundamental problems that students have with OO modelling. In order to address these problems, a concept-driven approach is developed to help novices produce more appropriate UML class and sequence diagrams. The effectiveness of this approach is evaluated by three different experiments. The data from these experiments is analysed and there is sufficient statistical evidence to support the claim that the participants produce more appropriate class and sequence diagrams after being taught concept mapping techniques. As a result of this positive outcome, a set of guidelines is developed for teaching OO modelling with concept maps. These guidelines could be integrated into existing OOAD courses to help software engineering educators resolve some of the difficulties they face when teaching OOAD.

The Unified Modelling Language (UML) and object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) have become essential topics in both academia and industry. UML is the accepted standard modelling language for describing object-oriented (OO) systems for analysis and design, and many UML CASE tools have been built and are used in academia and industry. OO technology and UML is an ongoing area of research, and many applications have been developed using OO technology. However, observations on current software development practices in some computer companies have shown that many OO software developers are not adopting recognised OOAD techniques. Both information technology (IT) students at higher educational institutions and professionals have in general found difficulty in grasping OO concepts, and the role that UML diagrams play in the design of the analysis and design solution. They particularly find difficulty in performing abstractions of real-world problems within the context of OOAD. They are unable to effectively build class diagrams from the problem domain because they essentially do not know ‘what’ to model. They therefore prefer to start coding software applications before building the analysis and design artifacts. Most of these students invariably prefer to focus on the implementation phase of a software development lifecycle and consider the preceding analysis and design phases superfluous. The overall goal of this thesis is to contribute to a significant improvement in the way students and software developers analyse and design their OO systems. We present a new approach by introducing concept mapping as a tool to help novices in OOAD produce more appropriate UML class and sequence diagrams. The class and sequence diagrams are selected because they represent the essential static and behavioural aspects of a problem domain. The former is fundamental to the OO modelling process and the latter is one of the most widely used dynamic diagrams in UML. Concept mapping is a popular tool used in education for facilitating learning, comprehension and the development of knowledge. Within the context of OOAD, we propose to use concept maps as a graphical representation of fundamental concepts, and their relationships and responsibilities within a problem domain. A static concept map derived from expanded use cases (use case narratives) can subsequently evolve into a class diagram containing information on classes, attributes, associations and generalisation-specialisation hierarchies. A dynamic concept map derived from an expanded use case can evolve into a sequence diagram containing information on the interaction of objects (and their messages) to fulfil the responsibilities of a particular scenario of the use case. In this thesis, a study is initially conducted to investigate in detail the difficulties undergraduate students have when producing UML class and sequence diagrams. The results of the study reveal and confirm some of the fundamental problems that students have with OO modelling. In order to address these problems, a concept-driven approach is developed to help novices produce more appropriate UML class and sequence diagrams. The effectiveness of this approach is evaluated by three different experiments. The data from these experiments is analysed and there is sufficient statistical evidence to support the claim that the participants produce more appropriate class and sequence diagrams after being taught concept mapping techniques. As a result of this positive outcome, a set of guidelines is developed for teaching OO modelling with concept maps. These guidelines could be integrated into existing OOAD courses to help software engineering educators resolve some of the difficulties they face when teaching OOAD.

Nous proposons une approche semi-automatique pour la rétro-ingénierie des diagrammes de séquence d’UML. Notre approche commence par un ensemble de traces d'exécution qui sont automatiquement alignées pour déterminer le comportement commun du système. Les diagrammes de séquence sont ensuite extraits avec l’aide d’une visualisation interactive, qui permet la navigation dans les traces d'exécution et la production des opérations d'extraction. Nous fournissons une illustration concrète de notre approche avec une étude de cas, et nous montrons en particulier que nos diagrammes de séquence générés sont plus significatifs et plus compacts que ceux qui sont obtenus par les méthodes automatisées. / We propose a semi-automated approach for the reverse engineering of UML sequence diagrams. Our approach starts with a set of execution traces that are automatically aligned to determine the common behavior. Sequence diagrams are then extracted with the help of an interactive visualization, which allows navigating though execution traces and performing extraction operations. We provide a concrete illustration of our approach with a case study, and show in particular that the resulting diagrams are more meaningful and more compact than those extracted by automated approaches.

Nous proposons une approche semi-automatique pour la rétro-ingénierie des diagrammes de séquence d’UML. Notre approche commence par un ensemble de traces d'exécution qui sont automatiquement alignées pour déterminer le comportement commun du système. Les diagrammes de séquence sont ensuite extraits avec l’aide d’une visualisation interactive, qui permet la navigation dans les traces d'exécution et la production des opérations d'extraction. Nous fournissons une illustration concrète de notre approche avec une étude de cas, et nous montrons en particulier que nos diagrammes de séquence générés sont plus significatifs et plus compacts que ceux qui sont obtenus par les méthodes automatisées. / We propose a semi-automated approach for the reverse engineering of UML sequence diagrams. Our approach starts with a set of execution traces that are automatically aligned to determine the common behavior. Sequence diagrams are then extracted with the help of an interactive visualization, which allows navigating though execution traces and performing extraction operations. We provide a concrete illustration of our approach with a case study, and show in particular that the resulting diagrams are more meaningful and more compact than those extracted by automated approaches.