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)

5.1 Terminology of System Integration


Interfaces

Communication between IT systems occurs through interfaces. Therefore, an interface is the basic element of system integration. Through an interface, an IT system (the sender) sends information to another IT system (the receiver). A particular IT system can be both a sender and a receiver.

Messages

IT systems that are connected via interfaces exchange messages. A message is sent by the sender IT system, with the expectation that receiving the message—immediately or later—initiates an activity in the receiver IT system. For the receiver IT system, each message received constitutes an event to which it responds.

For instance, if an invoice is sent in an electronic format, this event is an invoice receipt for the receiver of the invoice. After the receipt of the invoice, the receiver has a certain time frame to pay the bill. The receiver IT system has to confirm the receipt of the invoice and possibly activate another IT system, for example, an accounting...