Relationship analysis

Many conceptual modeling and system analysis methodologies provide various kinds of techniques to help system designers to model the real world mainly focusing on objects rather than relationships between them. Even though they promote the importance of problem domain understanding, they provide no guidelines for analyzing a system or domain in terms of its relationships and fail to provide the practical guidelines for identifying domain objects. Relationship Analysis as part of RNA (Relationship Navigation Analysis), based on a generic relationship taxonomy, provides a systematic way of identifying useful relationships in application domains. Also, Relationship Analysis provides the practical guidelines for identifying meaningful modeling entities and relationships between them in the application domain. Viewing an application domain from the relationship management point of view and modeling conceptual model from a philosophy of maximum access provides a unique vantage point for application design. RNA's generic relationship taxonomy provides a relationship checklist for any application domain. Using this relationship checklist, users can find not only meaningful relationships without omitting important ones, but also meaningful modeling entities related through these generic relationships. This dissertation mainly concerns Relationship Analysis including RNA's generic relationship taxonomy, its use through Relationship Analysis, and procedures and guidelines for performing a systematic Relationship Analysis. The comprehensiveness of RNA's generic relationships as a relationship checklist for system or requirements analysis is shown through mapping to modeling languages, theories, and existing taxonomies. The usefulness of RNA's generic relationships is shown through an example case study and known uses of each generic relationship in the template for the relationship. The feasibility of Relationship Analysis as a system analysis methodology is shown through an example case study and the evaluation of the analysis based on its comparison with object-oriented analysis.