Revision

Chapter 5
System modeling
• System modeling is the process of developing abstract models of a system,
with each model presenting a different view or perspective of that system.

• System modeling has now come to mean representing a system using some
kind of graphical notation, which is now almost always based on notations in
the Unified Modeling
Language (UML).

• System modelling helps the analyst to understand the functionality of the

system and models are used to communicate with customers.

Existing and planned system models

• Models of the existing system are used during requirements engineering.
They help clarify what the existing system does and can be used as a
basis for discussing its strengths and weaknesses. These then lead to
requirements for the new system.

• Models of the new system are used during requirements engineering to

help explain the proposed requirements to other system stakeholders.
Engineers use these models to discuss design proposals and to document
the system for implementation.

• In a model-driven engineering process, it is possible to generate a

complete or partial system implementation from the system model.

System perspectives
• An external perspective, where you model the context or environment of the
system.

• An interaction perspective, where you model the interactions between a

system and its environment, or between the components of a system.

• A structural perspective, where you model the organization of a system or the

structure of the data that is processed by the system.

• A behavioral perspective, where you model the dynamic behavior of the

system and how it responds to events.
UML diagram types
1. Activity diagrams, which show the activities involved in a process or in data
processing.

2. Use case diagrams, which show the interactions between a system and its
environment.

3. Sequence diagrams, which show interactions between actors and the system
and between system components.

4. Class diagrams, which show the object classes in the system and the
associations between these classes.

5. State diagrams, which show how the system reacts to internal and external
events.

Use of graphical models

• As a means of facilitating discussion about an existing or proposed system
✓ Incomplete and incorrect models are OK as their role is to support
discussion.
• As a way of documenting an existing system
✓ Models should be an accurate representation of the system but need
not be complete.
• As a detailed system description that can be used to generate a system
implementation
✓ Models have to be both correct and complete.

Context models
• Context models are used to illustrate the operational context of a system –
they show what lies outside the system’s boundaries.

• Social and organizational concerns may affect the decision on where to

position system boundaries.

• Architectural models show the system and its relationship with other systems.

System boundaries
• System boundaries are established to define what is inside and what is
outside the system.
 They show other systems that are used or depend on the system being
developed.

• The position of the system boundary has a profound effect on the system
requirements.

• Defining a system boundary is a political judgment.

✓ There may be pressures to develop system boundaries that increase /
decrease the influence or workload of different parts of an organization.

The context of the MHC-PMS

Process perspective
• Context models simply show the other systems in the environment, not
how the system being developed is used in that environment.

• Process models reveal how the system being developed is used in broader
business processes.
UML activity diagrams may be used to define business process models.
Process model of involuntary detention

Interaction models
• Modeling user interaction is important as it helps to identify user
requirements.

• Modeling system-to-system interaction highlights the communication

problems that may arise.

• Modeling component interaction helps us understand if a proposed system

structure is likely to deliver the required system performance and
dependability.

• Use case diagrams and sequence diagrams may be used for interaction
modelling.
 Use case Modeling
• Use cases were developed originally to support requirements elicitation
and now incorporated into the UML.

• Each use case represents a discrete task that involves external interaction
with a system.

• Actors in a use case may be people or other systems.

• Represented diagrammatically to provide an overview of the use case and

in a more detailed textual form.

Transfer-data use case

Sequence diagrams
• Sequence diagrams are part of the UML and are used to model the
interactions between the actors and the objects within a system.

• A sequence diagram shows the sequence of interactions that take place

during a particular use case or use case instance.

• The objects and actors involved are listed along the top of the diagram, with a
dotted line drawn vertically from these.

• Interactions between objects are indicated by annotated arrows.

Structural models
• Structural models of software display the organization of a system in terms of
the components that make up that system and their relationships.

• Structural models may be static models, which show the structure of the
system design, or dynamic models, which show the organization of the
system when it is executing.

You create structural models of a system when you are discussing and
designing the system architecture.

Class diagrams
• Class diagrams are used when developing an object-oriented system model to
show the classes in a system and the associations between these classes.

• An object class can be thought of as a general definition of one kind of system

object.

• An association is a link between classes that indicates that there is some

relationship between these classes.

When you are developing models during the early stages of the software
engineering process, objects represent something in the real world, such as a
patient, a prescription, doctor, etc.

Generalization
• Generalization is an everyday technique that we use to manage complexity.
 • Rather than learn the detailed characteristics of every entity that we
experience, we place these entities in more general classes (animals, cars,
houses, etc.) and learn the characteristics of these classes.

• This allows us to infer that different members of these classes have some
common characteristics e.g. squirrels and rats are rodents.

• In modeling systems, it is often useful to examine the classes in a system to

see if there is scope for generalization. If changes are proposed, then you do
not have to look at all classes in the system to see if they are affected by the
change.

• In object-oriented languages, such as Java, generalization is implemented

using the class inheritance mechanisms built into the language.

• In a generalization, the attributes and operations associated with higher-level

classes are also associated with the lower-level classes.

• The lower-level classes are subclasses inherit the attributes and operations
from their super-classes. These lower-level classes then add more specific
attributes and operations.

A generalization hierarchy
Object class aggregation models
• An aggregation model shows how classes that are collections are composed
of other classes.

• Aggregation models are similar to the part-of relationship in semantic data

models.

Behavioral models
• Behavioral models are models of the dynamic behavior of a system as it is
executing. They show what happens or what is supposed to happen when a
system responds to a stimulus from its environment.

• You can think of these stimuli as being of two types:

1. Data Some data arrives that must be processed by the system.

2. Events Some event happens that triggers system processing. Events

may have associated data, although this is not always the case.

Data-driven modeling
• Many business systems are data-processing systems that are primarily driven
by data. They are controlled by the data input to the system, with relatively
little external event processing.

• Data-driven models show the sequence of actions involved in processing

input data and generating an associated output.

• They are particularly useful during the analysis of requirements as they can be
used to show end-to-end processing in a system.

Event-driven modeling
• Real-time systems are often event-driven, with minimal data processing. For
example, a landline phone switching system responds to events such as
‘receiver off hook’ by generating a dial tone.

• Event-driven modeling shows how a system responds to external and internal

events.

• It is based on the assumption that a system has a finite number of states and
that events (stimuli) may cause a transition from one state to another.
State machine models
• These model the behavior of the system in response to external and internal
events.

• They show the system’s responses to stimuli so are often used for modelling
real-time systems.

• State machine models show system states as nodes and events as arcs
between these nodes. When an event occurs, the system moves from one
state to another.

• Statecharts are an integral part of the UML and are used to represent state
machine models.

Model-driven engineering
• Model-driven engineering (MDE) is an approach to software development
where models rather than programs are the principal outputs of the
development process.

• The programs that execute on a hardware/software platform are then

generated automatically from the models.

• Proponents of MDE argue that this raises the level of abstraction in software
engineering so that engineers no longer have to be concerned with
programming language details or the specifics of execution platforms.

Usage of model-driven engineering

• Model-driven engineering is still at an early stage of development, and it is
unclear whether or not it will have a significant effect on software engineering
practice.

• Pros
1. Allows systems to be considered at higher levels of abstraction.
2. Generating code automatically means that it is cheaper to adapt
systems to new platforms.
• Cons
1. Models for abstraction and not necessarily right for implementation.
2. Savings from generating code may be outweighed by the costs of
developing translators for new platforms.
Model driven architecture
• Model-driven architecture (MDA) was the precursor of more general model-
driven engineering.

• MDA is a model-focused approach to software design and implementation

that uses a subset of UML models to describe a system.

• Models at different levels of abstraction are created. From a high-level,

platform-independent model, it is possible, in principle, to generate a working
program without manual intervention.

Types of Model
1. A computation independent model (CIM)
o These model the important domain abstractions used in a system. CIMs
are sometimes called domain models.

2. A platform independent model (PIM)

o These model the operation of the system without reference to its
implementation. The PIM is usually described using UML models that
show the static system structure and how it responds to external and
internal events.

3. Platform specific models (PSM)

o These are transformations of the platform-independent model with a
separate PSM for each application platform. In principle, there may be
layers of PSM, with each layer adding some platform-specific detail.

Agile methods and MDA

• The developers of MDA claim that it is intended to support an iterative
approach to development and so can be used within agile methods.

• The notion of extensive up-front modeling contradicts the fundamental ideas

in the agile manifesto, and I suspect that few agile developers feel
comfortable with model-driven engineering.

If transformations can be completely automated and a complete program

generated from a PIM, then, in principle, MDA could be used in an agile
development process as no separate coding would be required.

Executable UML
• The fundamental notion behind model-driven engineering is that completely
automated transformation of models to code should be possible.
 • This is possible using a subset of UML 2, called Executable UML or xUML.

Features of executable UML

• To create an executable subset of UML, the number of model types has
therefore been dramatically reduced to these 3 key types:
1. Domain models that identify the principal concerns in a system. They
are defined using UML class diagrams and include objects, attributes,
and associations.

2. Class models in which classes are defined, along with their attributes
and operations.

3. State models in which a state diagram is associated with each class

and is used to describe the life cycle of the class.

The dynamic behavior of the system may be specified declaratively using the object
constraint language (OCL), or may be expressed using UML’s action language.

Questions
1. https://quizlet.com/39533366/software-engineering-9th-ed-by-
sommerville-chapter-5-flash-cards/
2. https://quizlet.com/207492690/software-engineering-9th-ed-by-
sommerville-chapter-5-flash-cards/
3. https://quizlet.com/ch/325589360/software-engineering-sommerville-9th-
flash-cards/