Seamless transformation from use case to sequence diagrams

• Published in: PeerJ. Computer science Vol. 9; p. e1444
• Main Authors: Alyami, Abdulrahman, Pileggi, Salvatore Flavio, Sohaib, Osama, Hawryszkiewycz, Igor
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States PeerJ. Ltd 22.06.2023; PeerJ Inc
• Subjects: Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems; Algorithms and Analysis of Algorithms; Computer software industry; Education; Emerging Technologies; Java (Computer program language); Methods; Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing; Requirements engineering; Software Engineering; System design; Training; UML; United States; Requirements engineering; UML; System design
• ISSN: 2376-5992; 2376-5992
• DOI: 10.7717/peerj-cs.1444

System design is an essential subject taught in information systems and has become a core course in its curriculum. Unified modelling language (UML) has been broadly adopted, and it is common to support the system design process using different diagrams. Each diagram serves a purpose by focusing on a specific part of a particular system. Design consistency ensures a seamless process, as the diagrams are generally interrelated. However, creating a well-designed system takes a lot of work, especially for university students with work experience. To overcome this challenge, aligning the concepts across diagrams is essential, which can help achieve better consistency and management of the design system, especially in an educational setting. This article is an extension of our previous work, as we have discussed a simple scenario of Automated teller machines to demonstrate the alignment concepts between UML diagrams. From a more technical perspective, the current contribution provides a Java program that aligns concepts by converting text-based use cases to text-based sequence diagrams. Then, the text is transformed in PlantUML to generate its graphical representation. The developed alignment tool is expected to contribute to helping students and instructors during the system design phases to be more consistent and practical. Limitations and future work are presented.