Three major "mishap" in UML

In this paper, from the problems of UML modeling coherence, taking management software development as an example, according to three aspects of upstream, downstream and model internal relations which are connected with UML model, the author analyzes the three barriers caused by UML modeling, and hopes to discuss with many modeling enthusiasts.

In the country's public coverage, almost all of them are uniformly filled with praise for the Unified Modeling Language UML (Unified Modeling Language), even if there are public complaints that they cannot understand the depths of the three-bit UML founders, blaming their own level of inadequacy, It was not expected that there were problems with UML itself. The author of this article only found in the colleagues of the computer Department of Peking University that their author questioned the validity of UML. Contrary to public reporting, the industry's privately popular view illustrates the problem of UML as a barrier to software development, that is, "ground, disunity":

(1) "Ober" such a gap so that modeling results can not communicate with users to identify the so-called demand, buried the bane of the software crisis;

(2) "ground" this gap so that the results of the modeling result can not command programmer coding, the end of the software and users expect the result is very far, rework, tardiness, trouble infinite;

(3) "disunity" such a gap between the modeling of the relationship between the messy, modeling process arduous, modeling results can not be justified.

The modeling mishap caused by these three barriers has made UML live up to the expectations of the people, "high, low or not" demonstrates that UML modeling is faltering in the software lifecycle, "disunity" illustrates that UML modeling content does not implement unified, figure 1 is a visual representation of UML problems. "

Figure 1 Modeling results with UML description "Falling Apart"

To be sure, mastering UML is an easy task for a good system analyst, but it is difficult to do a good job of the system analyst, the use of UML can certainly 100% blindfolded users, because users of the full text of the modeling diagram Shing, no understanding of the retort, the use of UML can be almost 100% Blindfolded software company bosses, because the boss is not a system analyst, do not know how to use UML modeling, system analysts can not tell the boss of UML problems, because it is easy to incur low level of censure.

One, UML is not the day--and the user/domain experts can not communicate to get the real demand

The so-called "Ober" refers to the use of UML modeling is difficult to communicate with the enterprise users in the upstream software development, because the UML expression and the upstream user's industry knowledge is far away, the user sees the full article software engineering terminology and the symbol to be afraid, simply cannot understand uses the UML to describe the business process, It's hard to really understand the requirements that UML is stating, with the business experts exchange without work, resulting in the software building started in the sand, the demand is not clear, endless beard project fell to the root of the cause, this situation caused the software open the first barrier, is the first major mishap in UML.

For enterprise users, they are concerned about how to describe the requirements of macro-management level and micro-management operation of enterprises on the basis of their organizational structure, business process and business information description.