Reducing UML Modeling Tool Complexity with Architectural Contexts and Viewpoints

Maged Elaasar, Florian Noyrit, Omar Badreddin, Sébastien Gérard

2018

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 them 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.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Elaasar M., Noyrit F., Badreddin O. and Gérard S. (2018). Reducing UML Modeling Tool Complexity with Architectural Contexts and Viewpoints.In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development - Volume 1: MODELSWARD, ISBN 978-989-758-283-7, pages 129-138. DOI: 10.5220/0006597901290138

in Bibtex Style

@conference{modelsward18,
author={Maged Elaasar and Florian Noyrit and Omar Badreddin and Sébastien Gérard},
title={Reducing UML Modeling Tool Complexity with Architectural Contexts and Viewpoints},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development - Volume 1: MODELSWARD,},
year={2018},
pages={129-138},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006597901290138},
isbn={978-989-758-283-7},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development - Volume 1: MODELSWARD,
TI - Reducing UML Modeling Tool Complexity with Architectural Contexts and Viewpoints
SN - 978-989-758-283-7
AU - Elaasar M.
AU - Noyrit F.
AU - Badreddin O.
AU - Gérard S.
PY - 2018
SP - 129
EP - 138
DO - 10.5220/0006597901290138