Flow-based Description of Conceptual and Design Levels

Building an information system involves a first phase of conceptual modeling of the ldquoreal world domain,rdquo then a second phase of design of the software system. For describing the software system, object-oriented methods and languages (e.g., UML) are typically used. For the system analysis process that produces the conceptual description, object-oriented techniques or their semantic extensions are used. This paper concentrates on UML as the most widely used language for these purposes. It proposes an alternative to extending UML, through development of a conceptual modeling methodology based on the notion of flow. This flow model provides a conceptually uniform applied description that is appropriate for the system analysis phase.