UML i teori och praktik
Abstract
During object-oriented system development, programming should be preceded by
analysis and design to assure that the system fulfils the demands of the
customer and simplify during the development phase and documentation. When
modeling the analysis and design phases, several different notations may be
used. One of these is the UML (Unified Modeling Language) which this thesis
will cover. The aim is to compare the use of the UML i practice versus what is
said in the literature.
The investigation is built upon interviews at different companies to receive
their reflections about the UML. Questions at issue are why and when the
selected companies use the UML and what diagrams they use. We also investigate
whether they strictly follow the UML notation or complement it with another
kind of notation. Moreover two companies not using the UML was interviewed to
find out why they have chosen not to.
The thesis starts with an introduction to object-oriented system development
with analysis and design followed by the history of the UML and its most common
diagrams according to Larman [1]. These diagrams are use case, conceptual
model, system-sequence diagram, contract, interaction diagram, class diagram
and state diagram. Each diagram is explained with text and graphics.
The most important results are that the UML is considered being adequate to the
system developers. They use a number of the most common diagrams. Furthermore
the CASE-tools showed not to meet the demands of the developers. We believe
that inadequate tools hinders the future diffusion of the UML on the market.
Improved tools for modeling and documentation are desired for all of the
interviewed companies.