Authors:
Maged Elaasar
1
;
Florian Noyrit
2
;
Omar Badreddin
3
and
Sébastien Gérard
2
Affiliations:
1
Modelware Solutions, United States
;
2
CEA and LIST, France
;
3
University of Texas El Paso, United States
Keyword(s):
ISO 42010, Architecture Description Language, Architecture Framework, UML, SysML.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Frameworks for Model-Driven Development
;
General-Purpose Modeling Languages and Standards
;
Languages, Tools and Architectures
;
MetaModeling
;
Methodologies, Processes and Platforms
;
Model-Driven Software Development
;
Models
;
Paradigm Trends
;
Software Engineering
;
Systems Engineering
Abstract:
UML modeling tools are notoriously hard to use for many reasons, including complexity of the language, weak support for methodologies, and insensitivity to users’ concerns. This is manifested in tools that expose all of their capabilities at once, overwhelming users. The problem is exacerbated when a tool supports multiple domain-specific languages that are defined on top of UML. In this case, the tool customizations necessary for each language may interfere with each other and exacerbate the complexity further. In this paper, we discuss an approach to reduce the complexity of UML tools by implementing and adapting the ISO 42010 standard on architecture description. In this approach, the notions of architecture contexts and architecture viewpoints allow heterogeneous UML-based languages to be independently supported and help contextualize the exposed tool capabilities to them. We present a case study where we defined several architecture contexts, and provided an implementation for t
hem in the Papyrus modeling tool. The implementation of this novel approach demonstrated the ability for multiple architecture contexts to coexist without interference and provided significant reduction in the exposed capabilities in the UI.
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