Research On The Smoothly Transitting From Use Case Model To Design Model

The development of software modeling methods goes through three stages, i.e. structural modeling method, the object-oriented modeling method and software architecture modeling method. Because the structural method is not behalf to the software reuse and maintenance, it is difficult to fit to the development of modern large-scale software. And there are many object-oriented modeling methods in the early stages, so users have the difficulty in selecting a object-oriented modeling method to meet their requirement. There exists a problem when use case model transits to design model in the traditional UML-based object-oriented method. Architecture description languages are universal description languages, but their description grammars are different and incompatible. The UML-based software architecture modeling method is focused on the software architecture description, but it is deficient to instruct the whole software modeling process.Therefor, in this paper UML is regarded as the architecture description language. A UML modeling process framework is designed by introducing the software architecture model between use case model and design model. As a result, the smoothly transiting problem between models is resolved, the primary modeling methods is improved and the instruction of software modeling process is benefited.Above all, in order to avoid to bring confusion during the course of modeling different layers of the software system by UML , a mapping rule table is gived from software architecture elements to UML elements by a UML light-weight way. During describing the software architecture, main elements of software architecture and itself are restrictively described by UML stereotype and UML object constraint language, and a extensible UML-based software architecture meta-model is given on basis of these descriptions. Consequently, software architecture model can be defined by the software architecture meta-model and a UML modeling process framework whose core is software architecture model is designed by introducing the software architecture model.Secondly, this paper separately illustrates from three stages of the use case modeling stage, software modeling stage and design modeling stage how to realize the the smoothly transitting problem from use case model to design model by the UML modeling process framework. Meanwhile, the advantage of the method improved is presented by comparing with the traditional UML-based object-oriented modeling method and the UML-based software architecture modeling method. By using the function theory the UML modelingprocess framework is defined, and the formal description of the UML modeling process framework is given.Finally, in order to show the applicability and effectiveness of the method improved, we present a case study of inventory management application, and a result of comparison and analysis is given.