Book Image

UML 2.0 in Action: A project-based tutorial

Book Image

UML 2.0 in Action: A project-based tutorial

Overview of this book

Most books about UML describe it almost in its entirety. Inevitably you're left with only a superficial knowledge of the range of UML elements, without a deep and intuitive understanding of how to apply UML as a whole to real world design problems. This book doesn't set out to cover all of UML, but instead pulls together those parts of UML with immediate practical relevance and presents them as part of a coherent process for using UML in your actual development projects.This book is designed to be read while you work on a real project. After an initial review of the essentials of UML and the design process, it begins with the modeling of a business system and its business processes, in this case an airport. Then the IT system intended to serve that business process is described and analysed. Finally the integration of the system into the production environment is covered in detail. The book can be used in two ways: it can be read through as a thorough grounding in how UML really works in practice; in addition it can be used as stand alone guide to that particular aspect of your own project. Both result in an intuitive understanding of how to actually use UML.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Chapter 3. Modeling Business Systems

Commercial IT systems are used mainly for dealing with business transactions of various sorts. Because of this, the development and integration of IT systems determine the views of those business processes that are embedded in the IT system. The business system model and its business processes serve as the basis for this. In this chapter we will discuss the construction of business system models.

To ensure smooth business transactions through the use of IT systems, it is indispensable to know and understand the business environment of IT systems. Therefore, analysis and modeling of business processes are important components of development and integration of IT systems.

Today, most IT systems are not only embedded in a business environment, but are also connected with other IT systems. Thus, every new IT system has to fit not into one, but two different target environments:

  • Integration on the business-process level: Each IT system has to be assigned the...