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Requirements for a graphical notation for class diagrams
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Perl, Yehoshua Geller, J. |
| Copyright Year | 1997 |
| Abstract | Recently OMG issued an RFP for graphical notations for OOA&D. In our view, OMG should not just review various proposals but should consider the more general issue of what generic properties are required for a graphical notation to qualify as a \good" notation. Our research group at NJIT has developed a catalog of such requirements during the design and implementation of the OODINI graphical schema editor [HGPN93]. Although OODINI was designed for Object-Oriented Databases (OODBs) rather than for OOA&D, the conceptual requirements apply equally to class diagrams for OOA&D. Since we did not conduct research in other aspects of OOA&D we do not express any opinion on these aspects, although it is quite likely that the listed properties could be extended to these aspects as well. The generic properties we identi ed are: 1. Mnemonic value 2. Maximization of graphical parts of the representation to minimize textual elements 3. Compositional semantics of icons 4. Use of highlighting to cope with human input overload 5. Display of several layers of abstraction to support a gradual comprehension process 6. Extensibility of the system of icons 7. Strict conformity to object-orientation 8. Ease of drawing and Perception Some of these properties are well known and generally accepted. However, they are included here to form a complete set of required generic properties. We recently reviewed the publicly available material of two proposals prepared in response to the above mentioned RFP for OMG, the Uni ed Modeling Language (UML) [BR96, BJR96] and the OPEN Modeling Language (OML) [FHSGPJ96]. While both proposed systems demonstrate various degrees of agreement with our listed generic properties, there is no evidence of a consensus regarding required properties. In our This research was (partially) done under a cooperative agreement between the National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Technology Program (under the HIIT contract, number 70NANB5H1011) and the Healthcare Open Systems and Trials, Inc consortium". |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.omg.org/docs/ad/97-02-01.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
