Description

A set of UML 2.0-compliant diagrams that describe the functional requirements for a fictitious courier company’s new Geographic Information and Delivery Route Optimization System.

Diagrams completed include:

1. Domain Model Class Diagram
2. Use Case Diagram for “Create Route”
3. Use Case Description for “Create Route”
4. System (Black Box) Sequence Diagram for “Create Route”
5. Use Case Sequence Diagram for “Create Route”.

This assignment was completed for BCIT’s COMP 2730, Systems Analysis and Design, in Spring 2008.

Technical Knowledge

In this assignment I applied my knowledge of:

• event decomposition
• Unified Modeling Language 2.0
• creating UML docs using CASE tools like Rational Rose, Netbeans and MS Visio
• fundamental principles of object oriented design like:
  • coupling
  • cohesion
  • object responsibility
  • protection from variations
  • indirection
  • use case controllers.

Skills Applied

This project demonstrates my ability to:

• analyze, decompose and model complex problems and data systems
• analyze information requirements and business processes to specify and design systems aligned with an organization’s goals
• understand and use UML including interaction, sequence and collaboration diagrams
• understand how to determine and document system requirements using the appropriate techniques
• use modeling tools like NetBeans and MS Visio to accurately and efficiently describe a problem domain being investigated as well as an architecture-independent solution.

Notes

During my second term at BCIT we studied the software development life cycle. We began with five basic stages (planning, analysis, design, implementation and support), and investigated the various models, tools and techniques that are used during each stage to best analyze and design modern information systems. This assignment provided a case study and asked that we analyze the business requirements and create and deliver a series of consistent documents using Unified Modelling Language (UML 2.0), the current industry standard for system modelling.

The Domain Model Class Diagram provided an opportunity to create a system’s major entities and their relationships. Its use of classes is consistent with the current object oriented programming paradigm, in which systems deal with objects that hold and encapsulate data, rather than the older, traditional dataflow models. The other four diagrams deconstruct a single use case or functional requirement, “Create Route”. Business events trigger elementary business processes that a system addresses as use cases, and each of the four documents describes the same use case from a different point of view, or with different granularity.

I found this project challenging because there were no hints and no clear guides. The type of system being designed, a geographic information and courier route optimization system, was completely unfamiliar to me, so I couldn’t use a standard design template or capitalize on an intuitive understanding of the problem domain. I completed some research about GIS systems and courier companies and began with a simple domain model of several key objects to which I added detail in an iterative process.

An important reference was our class text: Satzinger, John W, Robert B Jackson and Stephen D Burd. Systems Analysis & Design Fourth Edition. Boston: Thomson Course Technology, 2007.

Demonstration

The five documents I produced are available for download as a single PDF [907 KB]

You may also view each artifact individually:

1. Problem Domain Model Diagram JPEG [115 KB] / PDF [332 KB]
2. Use Case Diagram for “Create Route” JPEG [167 KB] / PDF [84 KB]
3. Use Case Description for “Create Route” PDF [46 KB]
4. System (Black Box) Sequence Diagram for “Create Route” JPEG [85 KB] / PDF [236 KB]
5. Use Case Sequence Diagram for “Create Route” JPEG [142 KB] / PDF [314 KB]