UML and UIML in Software Development

This assignment delves into the distinct yet interconnected roles of Unified Modeling Language (UML) and User Interface Markup Language (UIML) in software development. It elucidates how UML is used for modeling real-world objects and software structures, while UIML focuses on defining user interfaces. The assignment highlights the advantages of UIML in building platform-independent GUIs and its collaborative relationship with UML in creating comprehensive software applications.

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Mobile Computing for Multimedia

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Contents
Mobile Computing for Multimedia........................................................................................................1
Unified Modeling Language...................................................................................................................2
UML Diagrams.......................................................................................................................................2
Structure View...................................................................................................................................3
Behaviour View Diagrams..................................................................................................................3
Implementation View Diagrams-.......................................................................................................4
Example.................................................................................................................................................4
Online shopping system....................................................................................................................4
Use- Case Diagram.............................................................................................................................4
Entity- Relationship Diagram.............................................................................................................6
Context Analysis Diagram..................................................................................................................6
Level DFD for administrator...............................................................................................................7
Level DFD of Customer......................................................................................................................8
mers.......................................................................................................................................................8
Sequence/interaction diagram..........................................................................................................9
User Interface Mark-up Language.......................................................................................................10
Generic User Interface.........................................................................................................................10
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................11
References...........................................................................................................................................12

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Unified Modeling Language
UML i.e. Unified Modeling Language is defined as a standard documentation which is used
for modelling the real-world objects. This language is combined with graphical notations and
is used in creating the design and development of the models. It is also used for evaluating
the set of objects along with the relationship between them (Booch, Rumbaugh, & Jacobson,
2005).
UML is an extensible language. For the purpose of customization it has two elements which
are profiles and stereotypes. To serialize the UML model XMI i.e. markup interchange is
used. Along with its usage in modeling software it is also used in building models for
business processes, for system engineering and for organization structures. There are many
importance of Unified Modeling Language as it works as a catalyst for the technologies
which are dependent on the models for example, Model Driven Development and Model
Driven Architecture. Another importance of UML is that it supports many features like data
analysis, time analysis, state charts and object oriented structure design (SmartDraw, 2016).
There are many benefits and advantages of UML because it is very flexible in nature. It is
easy to customize the modeling elements and the intercommunication in a UML diagram in
accordance to the technologies. UML is also used in documentation of the software
architecture because it lets the software developer asses the performance of the software. It
provides guidelines for the software are which are under the process of development and
checks the security and keeps track of the process. UML also provides parallel designing i.e.
all the subsystems are designed independently. It is also used for designing the activities
scheduling because it refines the requirements. Apart from this, the development costs of the
UML are very low and provide a brief description of the working of the software. The
developed systems are memory and processor efficient systems. Hence, designing software
with the help of UML provides a more efficient system (Visual, 2016).
UML Diagrams
There are 14 types of Unified Modeling Language diagrams which are categorised as
structural diagrams, behaviour diagrams and implementation view diagrams.

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Structure View
The structure view consists of seven diagrams and it focuses on the things which are essential
to be present in the system which is getting modelled.
1. Class Diagram- The class diagram is used to determine the core structure of the
system. It defines the system’s classes along with their attributes and the relationship
among the classes.
2. Composite Structure Diagram- This diagram is basically used to define the internal
structure of the classes along with the possible associations of the structure.
3. Component Diagram- The component diagram splits the software system into
different components and then establishes dependencies among these components.
4. Deployment Diagram- These diagrams determines the hardware’s which are used in
the implementation of the system along with the changes made on the old hardwares
and the environment of the execution of the system.
5. Object Diagram- At a specific time, the complete or may be partial view of the
structure of the modelled system is determined by object diagrams.
6. Package Diagram- These diagrams determines the methods which are used to define
the way in which the whole system is split up into logical groups. It also describes the
inter dependencies among these groups.
7. Profile Diagram- These diagrams shows the stereotypes in the form of classes and
defines profiles as packages using the <<stereotype>> and <<profile>> stereotypes
respectively. They always operate at the Meta Model level (Abrams & Helms, 2004).
Behaviour View Diagrams
There are seven types of behaviour view diagrams and describes the behaviour of the system
which is getting modelled. Therefore, these diagrams are used to describe the functionality of
the software systems.
1. Use Case Diagram- This diagram defines the functionality which is provided by the
system in terms of actors and their goals are defined in terms of use cases. A proper
relationship is defined between the actors and the use cases.
2. Activity Diagram- This diagram represents the workflow of the components in a
system step-by-step i.e. it describes the overall flow of the control.
3. State Machine Diagram- These diagrams describes the states and the state transitions
of the system.

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4. Sequence Diagram- These diagrams describe the way by which the objects interact
with each other in a particular scenario of a use case (Oliver, 2017).
5. Communication Diagram- These diagrams are similar to the sequence diagram but
they mostly show the collaboration of the objects in place of the time sequence.
6. Interaction Overview Diagram- These diagrams describes the flow of control of the
interactions i.e. they provide a link between the objects.
7. Timing Diagram- These diagrams shows the behaviour of the objects in a given
period of time.
Implementation View Diagrams-
The implementation view diagrams consists of the components diagrams. These diagrams are
different from other diagrams in terms of nature and behaviour. Component Diagrams are
used to make executable systems and are used to visualise the relationship among the
components of the system (Tavangarian, 2009).
Example
Online shopping system
Use- Case Diagram
Login

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Manage Customer
Database
Browse
category
View/delete
entries
Add/remove
item from cart
Log-out
Shipping
Order
Payment
Credit/debit
cardCash
Feedbacks
Cancel/Order
Products
View account
detail
Visit Site Create
Account
Administrator
Customer

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Entity- Relationship Diagram
PRODUCT
PRO_ID
PROD_NAME
PRICE
QUANTITY
BUY PRODUCT
USER_NAME
USER_ID
CUSTOMER DETAILS
PHONE_NO
GENDER
EMAIL_ADDRESS
DOB
PAYMENT
MODE
FEEDBACK DELIVERY
ADDRESS

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Context Analysis Diagram
ADMINISTRATOR ONLINE SHOPPING
SYSTEM
CUSTOMERS
ADMIN LOGIN
VIEW
CUSTOMER
DETAIL
ADD
PRODUCTS
EDIT
PRODUCTS
DELETE
PRODUCTS
USER TABLE
STORE TABLE
VIEW
DELIVERY
REPORT
PRODUCT TABLE
FEEBACK
VIEW
FEEDBACK
Level DFD for administrator

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CUSTOMERS LOGIN
BUY PRODUCTS
PRODUCT TABLE
PAYMENT
TABLE
STORE TABLE
LOGIN TABLE
VIEW DELIVERY
REPORT
SEE SELECTED
TABLE
MAKE
PAYMENT
ACCOUNT
TABLE
ADD FEEDBACK
FEEDBACK
Level DFD of Customer

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Sequence/interaction diagram
Search Store
Searched Results
View Project description
Add to Shopping Cart
Checkout

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User Interface Mark-up Language
User Interface Mark-up Language is a declarative Extensive Mark-up Language which is
used to define user interfaces. UIML came into existence because it easily cut downs the time
which is required in the development of user interfaces for multiple device families. The
main goal of UIML is that it provides a format which is used to describe the blend which map
to various multiple devices. One of the key factors of UIML is that it does not incorporate
few tags i.e. the platform-specific and metaphor-dependent tags (Stanciulescu, 2008). With
each platform-specific tag there is a language gadget-set associated which define the interface
in the target platform. There are four components in a UIML document i.e. <Head>,
<interface>, <peers> and <template>. The actual user interface is represented by the
<interface> component in the UIML documentation. The four main components of
<interface> are as follows,
1. <Structure>- It defines the relationship between the different UI elements present
within an interface. Every structure has parts and each part defines the platform-
specific UI element which is in a type of combination with at least one class of
different UI elements.
2. <Style>- All the properties and the values of the interface are represented by style.
Few of the properties which are included in the parts of the Graphical User Interfaces
are background colour, foreground colour, font, etc.
3. <Content>- The content of each and every interface is displayed by <content>. With
the help of this, it gets easy to create interfaces which use multiple languages.
4. <Behaviour>- The behaviour represents the set of conditions and the actions within
rules of an interface. There are two conditions of UIML. The first is whenever an
action occurs while the second is occurred when any value of some data of an event is
equivalent to a particular value.
The Unified Modeling Language uses many different types of diagrams to represent
the software while the User Interface Mark-up Language is used to define user
interfaces (Duce, Gomes, Hopgood, & Lee, 2012).

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Generic User Interface
The User Interface Development is basically designed in an information device with
the help of which human beings interact with the device and then respond to it. There
are three main types of user interfaces,
1. Command language: the user must know the machine and program-specific
instructions or codes.
2. Menus: the user chooses the commands from the lists which are displayed on the
screen.
3. Graphical User Interface: the user gives the commands by selecting and clicking
on the icons which are displayed on the screen.
The Graphical User Interface uses the approach of UIML in building applications which are
accessible on multiple platforms. GUIs have two main components i.e. dynamic or the
behaviour part and the static or layout part. The dynamic part is designed with the help of
UML while the layout part is designed by UIML. GUI uses two types of components i.e. the
Command Line Interface and the GUI Wrappers. The designing parts which include screen
area and the point and dimensions are defined by UML. Hence, the UIML have many
advantages on generic user interface because it defines the interfaces easily. All the versions
of Microsoft Windows make use of GUI (Ma, Siu, Wong, & Zhong, 2015).
Conclusion
UML i.e. Unified Modeling Language is defined as a standard documentation which is used
for modelling the real-world objects. It is an extensible language. There are 14 diagrams in
UML which are used to define the structure of the software and make the development easy.
User Interface Mark-up Language is a declarative Extensive Mark-up Language which is
used to define user interfaces. The Graphical User Interface uses the UIML in building
applications. It has two components; the dynamic part is designed by UML while the layout
is designed by the UIML.

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References
Abrams, M., & Helms, J. (2004). User Interface Markup Language. Retrieved 9 February 2018,
from https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/5937/%20uiml-core-3.1-
draft-01-20040311.pdf
Booch, G., Rumbaugh, J., & Jacobson, I. (2005). The unified modeling language user guide. New
Delhi: Addison-Wesley.
Duce, D., Gomes, M., Hopgood, F., & Lee, J. (2012). User Interface Management and Design.
Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
Ma, F., Siu, S., Wong, C., & Zhong, Y. (2015). GUI design. Hong Kong: Sendpoints Publishing
Co., Ltd.
Oliver, R. (2017). Advantages and Disadvantages of UML Every Developer Should Know.
Retrieved 9 February 2018, from https://creately.com/blog/diagrams/advantages-and-
disadvantages-of-uml/
Rouse, M. (2017). What is UIML (User Interface Markup Language)?. Retrieved 9 February
2018, from http://searchmicroservices.techtarget.com/definition/UIML-User-Interface-
Markup-Language
SmartDraw. (2016). UML Diagram - Everything You Need to Know About UML Diagrams.
Retrieved 9 February 2018, from https://www.smartdraw.com/uml-diagram/
Stanciulescu, A. (2008). A methodology for developing multimodal user interfaces of information
systems. Louvain-la-Neuve: UCL.
Tavangarian, D. (2009). Intelligent Interactive Assistance and Mobile Multimedia Computing.
Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Visual. (2016). What is Unified Modeling Language (UML)?. Retrieved 9 February 2018, from
https://www.visual-paradigm.com/guide/uml-unified-modeling-language/what-is-uml/