Title :
An empirical study on using stereotypes to improve understanding of UML models
Author :
Kuzniarz, Ludwik ; Staron, Miroslaw ; Wohlin, Claes
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Software Eng. & Comput. Sci., Blekinge Inst. of Technol., Ronneby, Sweden
Abstract :
Stereotypes were introduced into the Unified Modeling Language (UML) to provide means of customizing this visual, general purpose, object-oriented modeling language, for its usage in specific application domains. The primary purpose of stereotypes is to brand an existing model element with a specific semantics. In addition, stereotypes can also be used as notational shorthand. The paper elaborates on this role of stereotypes from the perspective of UML, clarifies the role and describes a controlled experiment aimed at evaluation of the role - in the context of model understanding. The results of the experiment support the claim that stereotypes with graphical icons for their representation play a significant role in comprehension of models and show the size of the improvement.
Keywords :
Unified Modeling Language; object-oriented languages; object-oriented programming; software engineering; visual languages; UML models; Unified Modeling Language; model understanding; object-oriented modeling language; object-oriented software development; visual modeling language; Application software; Computer science; Context modeling; Object oriented modeling; Programming; Sections; Software engineering; Software standards; Standards development; Unified modeling language;
Conference_Titel :
Program Comprehension, 2004. Proceedings. 12th IEEE International Workshop on
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2149-5
DOI :
10.1109/WPC.2004.1311043