A Concepts-First Approach to Software Modelling
Speaker: Ven Yu Sien, ITEE
When: 2007-02-22 14:00:00
Venue: 78-420
Host: David Carrington
Abstract:The Unified Modeling Language (UML) and object-oriented analysis and
design (OOAD) are popular 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 the
industry. OO technology and UML is an ongoing area of research. Many
applications have been developed using OO technology. However,
observations on current software development practices in some
computer companies have shown that many software developers are not
adopting OOAD techniques.
Information technology (IT) students at universities have in general
found difficulty in grasping OO concepts, and the role that UML
models 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. It has also been observed that students face problems
in abstracting concepts from the problem domain when trying to build
their data models.
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 by proposing a minimal set of essential
techniques and models. As there are 13 UML artifacts for the OOAD
phases consisting of activity, state machine, use case,
communication, interaction overview, sequence, timing, class,
composite structure, component, deployment, object and package
diagrams, we intend to minimize the number of models produced to
effectively represent the static and dynamic aspects of the
software. Concept maps have been widely used in education for
facilitating learning, comprehension and the development of
knowledge. Within the context of analysis and design, we propose to
use concept maps as a graphical representation of fundamental
concepts and their relationships within a problem domain. We present
an approach to introduce concept mapping as a tool to help students
understand and master the technique of abstraction before they are
exposed to any analysis and design modelling techniques.
Biography:(biography unavailable)
Type: Ph.D confirmation
Contact:David Carrington, seminar host (davec@itee.uq.edu.au)
or Guido Governatori (ITEE seminar co-ordinator)
(guido@itee.uq.edu.au)