REPRESENTATION OF BUSINESS INFORMATION

FLOW WITH AN EXTENSION FOR UML

From Business Processes to object-orientated Software Engineering

Oliver Daute

University of Hagen, Universitaetsstrasse 1, 58084 Hagen, Germany

Keywords: Business Process, Requir

ement Engineering, Software Engineering, Use Case Diagram, UML

Abstract: The use of enterprise software solutions is getting increasingly

important. Today thousands of users are able

to work in an integrated enterprise solution. The requirements of software systems have changed

dramatically in quality and quantity in the last decades. While the know-how in technology was the main

factor for success in the past, today much more effort is needed and involved to understand what the

customer wants. At this point Business Process Engineering became an important way to describe the

business and system requirements. It focuses on requirements, terminology, processes, dependencies, and on

the Business Information Flow, which is the subject of this article. There are several procedures and

methodologies available for modeling business process requirements. Most of them are focused on a

particular area of business and utilize a special modeling technique often used to customize a standard

software solution. A better way, specifically for non-standard software solutions is the use of an

independent modeling language like the UML. The UML is well established in the domain of object

orientated software development (Meta, 2003). For business process modeling more investigations are

required, especially on how to represent business information flow. An appropriate way, as we propose

here, is to add business information flow to UML Use Case Diagrams.

1 INTRODUCTION

The software development process ranging from the

business processes to a usable enterprise solution is

an interesting and important field with increasing

attention from researchers and industries. There are

still open questions, especially how to represent

business process requirements. An important aspect

is the Business Information Flow (BIF), which is

investigated here.

This article is about the representation of BIF,

whi

ch is part of the overall Business Process Flow.

We add BIF to use case diagrams to improve the

validation process and to provide essential

information for business analysts, customers and

software developers. The combination of use case

diagrams and information flow is easy to read and

simple to understand.

Various modeling languages are available to

descri

be business process requirements. Some of

them are used to customize a pre-configured

software solution and can only be used by

experienced designers. Usually the process

description is not reusable and the effort invested

during the analysis phase is lost.

The Un

ified Modeling Language (UML) is a

reasonable alternative. UML is a well-known

modeling language and used in many software

development projects. UML is independent of any

software solution and requires no specials tools.

Unfortunately UML is not expressive enough for

Busine

ss Process Engineering (BPE), in particular to

represent the information flow (Ambler, 2000).

Therefore an extension for UML Use Case Diagrams

will be presented, which makes it simpler to

efficiently represent the flow of information.

The proposed extensions belong to a Business

Pro

file, called 4BP. The 4BP profile provides

several representation symbols for business process

modeling. For the representation of BIF we will

introduce some symbols out of 4BP. The extensions

will help us to understand which parameters affect a

single use case.

A further benefit of the extension is evident in the

val

idation process. For a software developer it is

569

Daute O. (2004).

REPRESENTATION OF BUSINESS INFORMATION FLOW WITH AN EXTENSION FOR UML - From Business Processes to object-orientated Software

Engineering.

In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pages 569-572

DOI: 10.5220/0002651305690572

 SciTePress

important to find as much as possible of information

in one place; so for the customer, who is interested if

his business requirements are described properly.

The combination of the UML use cases diagrams

with the extension is an appropriate way,

understandable, for business analysts, software

developers, as well for the customers. All

information can be depicted in one diagram, use

cases, actors, input & output data, global values, as

well as triggers.

In the following sections you will find a brief

overview about Business Process Engineering,

followed by the Business Information Flow, the

UML Use Case Diagrams and the Representation of

Business Information Flow. A small example at the

end shows how to apply the extension.

2 ABOUT BUSINESS PROCESS

ENGINEERING

Business process engineering is an important

discipline as a result of the growth of informational

enterprise system. When developing an entire

enterprise solution, BPE is the very first step to

capture and structure the business requirements in an

adequate way.

BPE describes the way what an enterprise does. It

describes the business from the customer’s

perspective. The business processes consist of two

different parts, a static system structure and a

dynamic system behavior.

The static system structure consists of business

sections divided into business components. The

business components contain business objects.

The dynamic system behavior consists of data,

information, global values, triggers and flows of

input & output data. This is the BIF, which is added

successively to the static structure during the

requirement analysis phase.

Figure 1 gives an idea of business process

engineering. To reduce the complexity only some

levels are shown. Beginning with the enterprise,

several phases of analysis, modeling and abstraction

are needed until all requirements are represented

with UML.

The BIF (see second layer from top) contains data

used by the business processes during process

execution. The data is exchanged by the processes or

flows into central databases.

Many business requirements can already be

represented with UML, but a question remains: How

to represent BIF with UML?

For enterprise solutions, such as ERP systems,

the engineering process from the business processes

to the final software solution is fully supported. The

representation of the information flow is already part

of the solution (e.g. as integrated databases and data

flow management systems). The disadvantage is the

use of proprietary representation techniques. Most

techniques are not compatible to each other and

make it difficult to reuse a business process

description for a different purpose, e.g., for quality

management (ISO 9002). Valuable work done by

business analysts, users and developers during the

requirement analysis phase is lost.

Figure 1: From Business Processes Engineering to

object-orientated Software Engineering

Especially for non-standard solutions, UML is an

alternative. It is widely accepted and provides

already different kind of shapes for the

representation of the static structure view and the

dynamic behavior; shapes like components, packets,

actors, use cases, classes, associations and

generalization etc.

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Additional shapes and symbols are required for

BPE (Scheer, 2003; Ambler, 2000) to support the

representation of business requirements.

3 BUSINESS INFORMATION

FLOW

Inside business information flow data is

transferred, such as documents, lists, reports, a work

order, protocols, company templates or data like the

address of a customer or a supplier.

For business processes (activities) the availability

of information is a precondition for task

performance. For instance, for a room reservation

we need several data about a customer. Therefore it

is important to investigate the input data and output

data during the requirement analysis phase. While a

business activity performs, the BIF (data) maybe

changed, modified or deleted. Maybe some more

data is generated.

Figure 2: Use Case Diagram

Business information flow consists of Global

Data, which is generally not changed during the

business process activity; Process Data, which is

used or changed during the business activities and is

known as input & output data; and Triggers, which

are used to control business processes, e.g. to enable

or disable a business use case.

The task of business information flow is to

transport data between the business processes. A

special representation for BIF is required.

4 USE CASE DIAGRAM

A UML use case diagram covers information about

actors, use cases, extend and include relations and

inheritance (see figure 2), but does not show the

influencing business parameters, like input and

output data or globally used data (Scheer, 2003).

Because of the missing focus on business

processes, especially the missing focus on BIF, use

case diagrams are not very useful for BPE. The

effort to work with the diagrams is too high

compared to the result in addition. Too few

information are available about the influencing

parameter.

Adding BIF to UML use case diagrams, as shown

next section will enrich the diagrams with valuable

information. It improves the validation process and

provides essential information for business analysts,

software developers, as well for the customers. It is

likely that use case diagram will be used much more

in future.

5 REPRESENTATION OF

BUSINESS INFORMATION

FLOW

The symbols, presented here are also used in a

similar way by IDEF (Integration Definition For

Function Modeling), a family of methods for

enterprise modeling and analysis.

For the representation of business information

flow we introduce symbols for input & output data

(process Data, like documents, list, reports), as well

as a symbol for triggers (process control), which are

used to control business use cases and we introduce

a symbol for global data (global data is not modified

in general).

Table 1 summarizes the new symbols for BIF. An

arrow is used for input & output data, indicating the

direction of data flow. Close to the arrow the type

and name of the data is specified. If the number of

data exceeds the available space in the diagram, a

reference should be used instead of the full names.

The point the arrows are connected to the use case

symbol is optional.

For a trigger we use a single line. The name of a

trigger is placed on top of the symbol. Because

triggers have a special function within the flow of

business information, it is recommended to place

triggers on top of or below of the use case symbol.

The global data symbol is also recommended to

put on top of the use case symbol and is represented

as a line as well. The designator of global data is

placed beside the symbol.

REPRESENTATION OF BUSINESS INFORMATION FLOW WITH AN EXTENSION FOR UML: From Business

Processes to object-orientated Software Engineering

571

Table 1: Types of Business Information Flow

type description symbol

<Input> Represents input

data, such as lists,

documents and

information.

<Output> Represents output

data, such as lists,

documents and

information.

<Trigger> Represents a

Trigger. Enables or

disables a business

use case.

<Global> Represents global

data. Global values

are not changed in

general.

To save symbols and maintain clarity, a “trigger”

and a “global” can be combined and depicted in one

symbol.

Figure 3 shows an example “Room Reservation”,

a use case diagram added with business information

flow.

An agent for instance “creates a reservation” (use

case). To make a reservation “the condition list” and

“pricing tables” are needed. This kind of business

information flow is global data and is represented

with an undirected small line on top of the use case.

If all data is available, such as customer name,

address, timeframe of stay and category then a

“request” is send to “assign room” (use case) and the

reservation can be completed. An assignment is

made according to the booked category and a

“confirmation” (output data) is generated. The

“confirmation” is also input data for the use cases

“view reservation” and “inform customer”. The

input and output data, such as “request” and

“confirmation” are represented with an arrow.

For a trigger, for instance, the use case “modify

reservation scheme” can only be used if a trigger is

set to enable the use case. Triggers are important for

business process controlling.

6 CONCLUSION

We propose an extension of UML to combine

dataflow information with use case diagrams. It is an

easy simple extension with arrows for “input &

output data” and single lines for “triggers” and

“global data”. It provides essential information for

software developers, as well as for the customer and

improves the validation process. The extension in

combination with UML is easy to use in any

software development project and is not dependent

on special software. The business process modeling

is reusable, for instance for quality managements

purposes.

Figure 3: Use Cases Diagram with Business

Information Flow

REFERENCES

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IDEF. Family of Methods,

1408 University Dr. East

College Station, TX 77840.

http://www.idef.com.

Sergio de Cesare, Patel, 2001. Business Modeling with

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Jacobson, Booch, Rumbaugh, 1999. The Unified

Modeling Language User Guide. Addison-Wesley.

Geoffrey, 2000. The Business Process Model. Enterprise

Architect.

Meta Group, 2003. Market Research, Worldwide IT

Benchmark Report. METAGroup.

UML, Unified Modeling Language,

http://www.omg.org/

Scheer, 2003. Modellierungsmethoden Metamodelle

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