Integrating Architectural Views in UML

Authors: Alexander Egyed

To support the development of software products we frequently make use of general-purpose software development models (and tools) such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML). However, software development in general and software architecting in particular (which is the main focus of our work) require more than what those general-purpose models can provide. Architecting is about:

1) modeling the real problem adequately

2) solving the model problem and

3) interpreting the model solution in the real world

In doing so, a major emphasis is placed on mismatch identification and reconciliation within and among architectural views (such as diagrams). We often find that this latter aspect, the analysis and interpretation of (architectural) descriptions, is under-emphasized in most general-purpose languages. We architect not only because we want to build (compose) but also because we want to understand. Thus, architecting has a lot to do with analyzing and verifying the conceptual integrity, consistency, and completeness of the product model.

The emergence of the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which has become a de-facto standard for OO software development, is no exception to that. This work describes causes of architectural mismatches in UML views and shows how integration techniques can be applied to identify and resolve them in a more automated fashion. In order to do so, this work introduces a view integration framework and describes its major activities – Mapping, Transformation, and Differentiation. To deal with the integration complexity and scalability of our approach, the concept of VIR (view independent representation) is introduced and described.