UML Class & Sequence Diagram, Design, CASE Tools & Testing - Essay Example

UML & SEQUENCE DIAGRAM, DESIGN, CASE TOOLS & TESTING due: UML & Sequence Diagram, Design, CASE Tools & Testing Introduction Organizations keep on changing their setup as a way of improving their organizational culture. For instance, an organization dealing in tourism will change its structure from time to time, so as to cater for tourism demands. Such an organization needs to improve on its information system, prompted by changes in technology. To develop and improve the system, they will adopt various architectural and detailed designs. After implementation of the designs, reports are prepared and presented to the management. The reports contain a summary of the problems necessitating the system, the objectives, the general nature of the system and the reasons why a particular design was adopted. It also includes the time and resources required to design and implement the information system (Singh 2007, p.14). This report will analyse the various design techniques used in development of information systems. Purpose of: UML class diagram Is used to model the static view of an application. The diagrams can be directly mapped with object oriented languages. It gives the analysis and design of the static view of a particular application. It also describes the responsibilities of a system. The UML diagram forms the basis for component and deployment diagrams as well as forward and reversing engineering (Baudry, Traon & Sunyé, 2002, p.54-63). Sequence Diagram Can be used by the technical staff of a business to document the behaviour of a future system. During the design period, developers use the diagram to show the system’s object interactions in the development of new systems. Sequence diagram an also be used to document the interaction of objects in an existing system. The documentation has proved to be useful in moving a system to another organization or an individual (Sarma, Kundu & Mall 2007, p.60-67). Difference between architectural design and detailed design An architectural design usually comprises of decisions about how the system will be built and how the database will look like (Satzinger, Jackson & Burd 2011, p.33).the architectural design aims at satisfying the functional requirements and achievement of the desired set of quality attributes. Quality in this case refers to the combination of fitness for purpose, which is the feature, and fitness for use, which is the attribute. The architectural design bears the qualities of a system by showing the form, functionality and fitness. The design focuses on both functional and non-functional requirements, by representing its high-level view. The architectural design is motivated by the business requirements. Detailed design on the other hand deals mostly with the functional requirements and represents a low-level view with more implementation details. The detailed design guides and restricts the form of the desired information system. It consists of patterns of information flow, channels of information, the role of decision makers and the competitors (Singh 2007, p.14). When choosing an architectural design, there are strategies to be considered. The consideration is based on the impacts of the design. They are called use cases and are important in shaping the success of the application of the design. One such strategy is business capital. In the strategy, the use case contains a high usage level and is particularly important to users and other stakeholders when compared to other features. The second strategy is high impact. This use case forms the intersection of both functionality and quality attributes, representing a cross-cutting concern across the layers and tiers of an application (Bojic & Velasevic 2000, p.23). Part b CASE tools are a set of software application programs used in software development life cycle (SDLC). Software engineers and project managers use the tools in the development of software system. The tools are used as analytical tools, quality assurance tools, project management tools, and documentation tools (Lancaster 2001, p.104). The tools aid team working and quality assurance in the following ways: 1. Analysis tools help in the gathering of information requirements, automatically checking for any inconsistency, inaccuracy in the diagrams, any data redundancies or erroneous omissions. Examples of such tools include CaseComplete catering for requirement analysis, Accompa and Visisble Analyst for total analysis. 2. Quality assurance tools in a software organization monitors the engineering process and methods used in the development of the software product. This guarantees conformity to quality set by the organization standards. The quality assurance tools are comprised of configuration and change control tools, as well as software testing tools. Examples of such tools are SoapTest, AppsWatch, and JMeter. 3. Project management tools are important when it comes to team working. This is because they are used in project planning, cost and effort estimation, resource planning, and project scheduling. The managers of an organization have to strictly adhere to the project execution with all the mentioned steps in the software project management. The project management tools are useful in the storage and sharing of project information in real-time within the entire organization. Such tools include creative Pro Office, Trac Project, and Basecamp. 4. Documentation tools also come in handy in team working. In a software project, documentation starts before the actual software process, and then goes throughout all the phases of SLDC. It continues even after completion of the project. The documentation tools generate documents for both technical and end users. Technical users refer mainly to in-house professionals of the development team who keep on referring to the system manual, training manual, and installation manual. The end user documents give a description of the functioning of the system such as user manual. Such tools include Doxygen, DrExplain, and Adobe Robohelp (Lancaster 2001, p.104). Software testing and its purpose The overall intent of software testing is to improve the ability of developers to produce high-quality software. The process is however expensive and labor intensive. For safety-critical applications, the process is even more expensive. This does not, however, hinder developers from pursuing their goals of meeting the goal of software testing which is a high level of automation, aimed at reducing the costs. Minimizing human error, and making the whole process much easier (Ammann & Offutt 2008, p.10). There are several types of software testing. Examples are black-box and grey-box testing. Black box testing, also called behavioural testing, is an umbrella under which several other testing techniques are found.in this test, the tester needs to know the code or the software design. The tests are based on functionality and requirements. In blackbox testing, the internal structure of the item being tested is unknown to the tester. This testing method tries to find errors in incorrect and missing functions, errors in external database access, initialization and termination errors (Ahmed 2009, p.19). Gray box testing, also called gray box analysis, on the other hand, is non-intrusive and does not require user accessibility to the source code. It is a software debugging technique in which the tester has limited knowledge of the internal operations of the program. This is from the understanding of a gray box device, system or program whose operations are partially understood. When it comes to internal processes, the gray box testing treats a program like a black box that must be treated from the outside. In this test, the tester may know the interaction between the system and its components, but lacks the detailed knowledge about the functioning of the internal programs and operations. There is a clear distinction between the developer and the tester, thus reducing the risk of personnel conflicts (Dustin 2002, p.111). Conclusion Development of advanced information systems cannot be ignored by any organization. It is however, worth noting that different organizations will have different information systems due to their different requirements. The information systems form a whole project for a particular organization. Tools such as CASE tools are used in the project management. Developers are required to come up with sophisticated software to run the systems. The software have to be tested before they are implemented. In addition, the software have to be checked and updated every now and then. Bibliography AHMED, A. (2009). Software testing as a service. CRC Press. AMMANN, P., & OFFUTT, J. (2008). Introduction to software testing. Cambridge University Press. BAUDRY, B., LE TRAON, Y., & SUNYÉ, G. (2002). Testability analysis of a UML class diagram. In Software Metrics, 2002. Proceedings. Eighth IEEE Symposium on (pp. 54 63). IEEE. BOJIC, D., & VELASEVIC, D. (2000, February). A use-case driven method of architecture recovery for program understanding and reuse reengineering. In 2011 15th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (pp. 23-23). IEEE Computer Society. DUSTIN, E. (2002). Effective software testing: 50 specific ways to improve your testing. Boston, Addison-Wesley. LANCASTER, G. (2001). Software Design and Development: Your Step by Step Guide to HSC Success. SARMA, M., KUNDU, D., & MALL, R. (2007, December). Automatic test case generation from UML sequence diagram. In Advanced Computing and Communications, 2007. ADCOM 2007. International Conference on (pp. 60-67). IEEE. SATZINGER, J., JACKSON, R., & BURD, S. D. (2011). Systems analysis and design in a changing world. Cengage Learning. SINGH, S. R. (2007). Information system management. New Delhi, APH Publishing. Read More