Information Systems Modeling [INFOB313]

Learning outcomes

• Understand the principles for analysing and modelling Information Systems at a business and technical levels, and capture the difficulties and challenges for each;
• Describe, understand and analyse some aspects of Information Systems with an appropriate model: functionalities, business concepts and data, behaviour, processes, etc.
• Use the appropriate UML Diagrams to specify those models.

Objectives

This course aims at training for adequately analysing the many aspects of Information Systems: collecting the needs and functionalities expressed by clients, formalising the domain concepts and data, specifying the expected behaviours and functionalities, and disambiguating complex behaviours.

Content

Information Systems are a cornerstone component of our world. Learning how to develop adequate solutions for a given expertise domain often requires a thorough analysis phase of the clients' requirements, which represents a necessary prerequisite for a successful implementation.

By using appropriate modelling techniques, development costs throughout the software lifecycle may be drastically reduced, assuming an appropriate language and methodology are employed.

This course proposes a general introduction to the principles and techniques for the analysis and modelling of Information Systems, based on the UML notation.

The modelling phase is an important step in this process, since it provides significant benefits in terms of costs, relevance and evolutivity of Information Systems. We focus on the standardised language UML from the OMG for modelling the many aspects of an Information System, and discuss along way UML's limitations and possible alternatives.

Table of contents

1. Introduction to Modelling
   • Modelling in Science in General, and in Computer Science in Particular
   • Definition / Characteristics of Information Systems
   • Specification Languages: from natural to formal languages
   • Model Qualities
2. Introduction to UML
3. Conceptual Modelling of Information Systems: Class Diagrams and Object Constraint Language (OCL)
4. Object Lifecyle Modelling: State Machines
5. Behavioural / Functional Modelling of Objects: Activity Diagrams
6. Metamodelling and Domain-Specific (Modelling) Languages
7. Object Interactions Modelling: Interaction Diagrams
8. Requirement  Analysis: Use Cases