Drawing Activity Diagrams

Activity diagrams experience an increasing importance in the design and description of software systems. Unfortunately, previous approaches for automatic layout support fail or are just insufficient to capture the complexity of the related requirements. We propose a new approach tailored to the needs of activity diagrams which combines the advantages of two fundamental layout concepts called "Sugiyama's approach" and "topology-shape-metrics approach", originally developed for layered layouts of directed graphs and for orthogonal layout of undirected graphs respectively

Using Activity Diagrams to Model Systems Analysis Techniques: Teaching What We Preach

Activity diagrams are used in Systems Analysis and Design classes as a visual tool to model the business processes of ‘as- is’ and ‘to-be’ systems. This paper presents the idea of using these same activity diagrams in the classroom to model the actual processes (practices and techniques) of Systems Analysis and Design. This tip accomplishes three things: (1) helps students better understand the purpose of drawing activity diagrams, (2) illustrates how useful activity diagrams are in understanding and communicating techniques and business processes at both high and low levels, and (3) teaches the various systems analysis and design practices and techniques in a creative manner that visual learners will appreciate

Extending constrained hierarchical layout for drawing UML activity diagrams

Ankara : The Department of Computer Engineering and Institute Engineering and Science of Bilkent University, 2002.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2002.Includes bibliographical references leaves 48-51.While modeling an object-oriented software, a visual language called Unified Modeling Language (UML) may be used. UML is a language and notation for specification, construction, visualization, and documentation of models of software systems. It consists of a variety of diagrams including class diagrams and activity diagrams. Graph layout has become an important area of research in Computer Science for the last couple of decades. There is a wide range of applications for graph layout including data structures, databases, software engineering, VLSI technology, electrical engineering, production planning, chemistry, and biology. Diagrams are more effective means of expressing relational information and automatic graph layout makes them to be more comprehensible. In other words, with graph layout techniques, the readability and the comprehensibility of the graphs increases and the complexity is reduced. UML diagrams are no exception. In this thesis, we present graph layout algorithms for UML activity diagrams based on constrained hierarchical layout. We use an existing implementation of constrained hierarchical layout to draw UML activity diagrams. We analyze and present the results of these new layout algorithms.Yüksel, H MehmetM.S

Prototype of Intrusion Detection Model using UML 5.0 and Forward Engineering

In this paper we are using UML (Unified Modeling Language) which is the blueprint language between the programmers, analysts, and designer’s for easy representation of pictures or diagrammatic notation with some textual data. Here we are using UML 5.0 to show “prototype of the Intrusion Detection Model” and by explaining it by combining various parts by drawing various UML diagrams such as Use cases and Activity diagrams and Class Diagram using which we show forward engineering using the class diagram of the IDM( Intrusion Detection Model). IDM is a device or software that works on detecting malicious activities by unauthorized users that can cause breach to the security policy within a network

Representing the Study Site in a Diagram

The purpose of this resource is to help students learn the skills and value of the translating complex interactions among Earth System components into a simplified diagram. Students visit a study site, where they observe and recall their existing knowledge of air, water, soil, and living things to make a list of interconnections among the four Earth system components. They make predictions about the effects of a change in a system, inferring ways these changes affect the characteristics of other related components. Educational levels: Middle school, High school

Visual Detection of Structural Changes in Time-Varying Graphs Using Persistent Homology

Topological data analysis is an emerging area in exploratory data analysis and data mining. Its main tool, persistent homology, has become a popular technique to study the structure of complex, high-dimensional data. In this paper, we propose a novel method using persistent homology to quantify structural changes in time-varying graphs. Specifically, we transform each instance of the time-varying graph into metric spaces, extract topological features using persistent homology, and compare those features over time. We provide a visualization that assists in time-varying graph exploration and helps to identify patterns of behavior within the data. To validate our approach, we conduct several case studies on real world data sets and show how our method can find cyclic patterns, deviations from those patterns, and one-time events in time-varying graphs. We also examine whether persistence-based similarity measure as a graph metric satisfies a set of well-established, desirable properties for graph metrics

Observed strategies in the freehand drawing of complex hierarchical diagrams

Chunk decomposition and assembly strategies have been found in the drawing of complex hierarchical diagrams (spe- cifically AVOW diagrams). Analysis of 40 diagrams pro- duced by five participants provided evidence for the strategies based on the duration of pauses between drawn elements. The strategies were initially discovered using a new visualiza- tion technique developed to allow the detailed examination of the sequential order of diagram drawing in conjunction with information about the durations of pauses associated with drawn elements