SET212: Software Engineering (2)

System Models
Topics covered
 Behavioural models
 Data models
 Object models
 CASE workbenches
Object (Class) models
 Object models describe the system in terms of object
classes and their associations.
 An object class is an abstraction over a set of objects with
common attributes and the services (operations) provided
by each object.
 Various object models may be produced
• Inheritance models;
• Aggregation models;
• Interaction models.
Object models
 Natural ways of reflecting the real-world entities
manipulated by the system
 Object class identification is recognised as a difficult
process requiring a deep understanding of the application
domain
Inheritance models
 Organise the domain object classes into a hierarchy.
 Classes at the top of the hierarchy reflect the common
features of all classes.
 Object classes inherit their attributes, services, and
relationships from their super-classes/ancestors. these
may then be specialised as necessary.
Object models and UML
 The UML is a standard representation devised by the
developers of widely used object-oriented analysis and
design methods.
 It has become an effective standard for object-oriented
modelling.
 Notation
• Object classes are rectangles with the name at the top,
attributes in the middle section and operations in the bottom
section;
• Relationships between object classes (known as associations)
are shown as lines linking objects;
• Inheritance is referred to as generalisation and is shown
‘upwards’ rather than ‘downwards’ in a hierarchy.
Library class hierarchy
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User class hierarchy
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Multiple inheritance
 Rather than inheriting the attributes and services from a
single parent class, a system which supports multiple
inheritance allows object classes to inherit from several
super-classes.
 This can lead to semantic conflicts where
attributes/services with the same name in different super-
classes have different semantics.
 Multiple inheritance makes class hierarchy reorganisation
more complex.
Multiple inheritance

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Object aggregation
 An aggregation model shows how classes that
are collections are composed of other classes.
Object aggregation
Object Interaction modelling
 A behavioural model shows the interactions
between objects to produce some particular
system behaviour that is specified as a use-case.
 Sequence diagrams (or collaboration diagrams)
in the UML are used to model interaction
between actors and the system objects that they
use.
Object Interaction modelling
Method weaknesses
 They do not model non-functional system
requirements.
 They do not usually include information about
whether a method is appropriate for a given
problem.
 They may produce too much documentation.
 The system models are sometimes too detailed
and difficult for users to understand.
CASE workbenches
 Computer-aided software engineering (CASE)
workbenches is a coherent set of tools that is
designed to support related software process
activities such as analysis, design or testing.
 Analysis and design workbenches support
system modelling during both requirements
engineering and system design.
 These workbenches may support a specific
design method or may provide support for
creating several different types of system model.
An analysis and design workbench

Structur ed Repor t
Data
diag ramming gener ation
dictionary
tools facilities

Centr al Query
Code
infor ma tion langua ge
gener ator
repository facilities

Forms Design, anal ysis

Impor t/e xpor t
cr ea tion and checking
facilities
tools tools
Questions
 State whether the use of the underlined words in the
following statements is correct (√) or incorrect (×). In case
of an incorrect use, provide the correct word.
 Evolutionary prototypes start with poorly understood
requirements ( ).
 Throw away prototyping provides better system structure that
incremental development ( ).
Assignment
1. Consider an air-condition system software that is used to manage the
temperature of the room. It provides some functionalities such as
cooling the room, heating the room and ventilate the room from odors.
The system must be modeled so that we can begin implementing it.
For this system sketch the State Machine Diagram.
Assignment
2. Consider a university system software that is used to manage the whole users
in the university including students, academic staff and employees. It provides
some functionalities such as academic staff can enter degrees for each
student, and he can also view all student records.
 Students can see all available courses and their degrees, and they can also

register through the site for the new courses.

 The student affairs can view and edit the personal information of the students

and the courses they have taken.

 The system provides many reports for academic staff and student affairs and

it also records the data of students, academic staff and employees, and each
of them can enter the system through their own account.
For this system sketch the following diagrams:
 Semantic data model using E-R model and UML

 Data Dictionaries

 Inheritance Object model

 Aggregation Object model