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)

3.1 Business Processes and Business Systems


3.1.1 What is a Business Process?

Most people intuitively understand a business process to be a procedure or event with the purpose of reaching a goal. When looking at our UML Airport we can find many different business processes and goals:

  • The goal of our passenger is to go on vacation. To achieve this goal, he has to book a flight and hotel, pack his bags, drive to the UML Airport, check in and board his airplane, exit the plane at his destination airport, go to the hotel, move into his room, and unpack his bags.

  • The owner of the newsstand at the UML Airport wants to sell her goods. For this, she buys items inexpensively and sells them to her customers at a higher price.

  • In order for passengers to check in at the UML Airport, an employee of passenger services accepts their tickets and luggage, inquires about their seat preferences, and uses an IT system. By the end of the procedure, the passengers receive their boarding passes on which their reserved...