Towards the Principles of Designing Diagrammatic Modeling Languages: Some Visual, Cognitive and Foundational Aspects

• Main Author: M. Naci Akkøk
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: DML
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.97.4183; http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~nacia/DISSERTATION-00.pdf

Diagrammatic Modeling Languages (DMLs) are used extensively in software engineering. Well-known examples are DMLs like the Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) and its various dialects that are used for datamodeling, the Flowchart, the Statechart and their dialects used for flowbased and state/event-based behavioral-modeling respectively, and the Data-Flow Diagram (DFD) that is used for process-modeling, which incorporates to a degree both data and behavioral perspectives of a system. More recent DMLs include the de-facto industry standard DML suite called the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which contains eight distinct DMLs addressing various views of a system in version 1.5. Another, older and wellestablished standard that may be considered as a three-perspective DML suite is the CCITT/ITU standard Specification and Description Language (SDL). It is worth to mention DMLs that are based upon well-known mathematical formalisms used at system level like the Petri Nets also, as well as diagrammatic formalisms used at an algebraic level (rather than