Study On A Conversion Method From UML Diagrams To SVG Graphics

As Internet grows rapidly, it will make great profits to online publish UML diagrams in a suitable format, so that multi-user can edit the UML diagrams anytime anywhere via the Web. XML itself is platform-independent, easy to expand, interactive, semantic in nature etc, it has been made as the fact standard of data exchange. SVG is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics in XML, with the advantages of both vector graphics and XML. It's quite suitable for publication on the Internet. An XML-based transformation method of UML diagrams into SVG graphics is proposed. The main idea of the transformation is that according to XML metadata exchange standard XMI, the components of the UML design model are represented as XML data and then XSLT is used to transform the XML document into SVG images.In the part of representing UML object model in XML format, it describes how to mapping the class, the attributes of class and the relationship of class like association and generalization to XML document. Then according to XMI2.0, it describes how to mapping UML conceptual model to XML document structure pattern like XML Schema. Coming to the part of using XSLT to transform the XMI document into corresponding SVG graphics, it describes the mapping relationship between UML model objects represented in XML document and basic graphic elements in SVG from the visual and functional characteristics combined perspective. Finally, the entire process framework of the transformation is proposed.Based on the conversion framework, take a commodity catalog model based on B2B for example, with NetBeans adopted as a development platform, the method is applied to a case study. It is proved that the transformation method can fully display the UML model information and preserve the key concepts of the original model. Since the inherent advantages of SVG can be fully utilized, the online publication and update of business logic diagrams can be made possible.