VL'99 Tutorial

The Unified Modeling Language (UML): Facts and Trends

To be presented at the 1999 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, September 13, 1999
Prof. Dr. Gregor Engels
University of Paderborn
Dept. of Computer Science
D-33095 Paderborn
Germany

Tel: +49-5251-60 3337
Fax: +49-5251-60 3431
Email: engels@upb.de

Aims and Objectives

Provide insights in all diagram languages of UML, discuss their usage within the software development process, and sketch future trends and perspectives of UML.

Course Content

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been approved by the OMG in November 1997 as the standard notation for object-oriented analysis and design. This tutorial introduces the basic concepts and all diagram languages of UML in terms of a running example. It illustrates how UML can be deployed within the (unified) software development process and how UML models can be transformed into an object-oriented programming language like Java. The tutorial ends with an overview on current trends around UML, as, e.g., the extension of UML for embedded, real-time or multimedia systems.

Intended Audience and Course Goals

It is assumed that the participants have some basic knowledge of Entity-Relationship modelling as well as of one object-oriented programming language. It is intended that the participants will have understood all relevant language concepts of UML, that they are able to choose the right diagram type for specific modelling purposes and that they are able to model at least small applications with UML and to translate them into Java code.

Course Outline

  1. Introduction
  2. History of UML
  3. Problem Analysis: Use Case Diagrams
  4. Object Model: Class Diagrams
  5. Dynamic Model: Statecharts
  6. Functional Model: Activity and Interaction Diagrams
  7. Tool Support (e.g. Rational Rose, Innovator, TogetherJ)
  8. Implementation in Java
  9. UML Profiles: Extensions for Embedded, Real-time, or Multimedia Systems
  10. Summary and Conclusions

Biography

Prof. Dr. Gregor Engels has the chair for database and information systems at the University of Paderborn (Germany) since 1997. He works since more than 10 years in the field of object-oriented modelling techniques. He gave tutorials on this topic at several national and international conferences (ESEC 91, ESEC 93, ICDE 93, ICDE 94, Softwaretechnik'98, CAiSE'99, STJA'99), as well as industrial seminars for different companies in Germany. He initiated and heads the Special Interest Group 2.1.9 "Object-oriented System Development" of the German Computer Society (GI).

His research interests are object-oriented modelling concepts, process modelling techniques, and multimedia software engineering.

Literature