Actor perception in business use case modeling

Mainstream literature recognizes the validity and effectiveness of use cases as a technique for gathering and capturing system requirements. Use cases represent the driver of various modern development methods, mainly of object-oriented extraction, such as the Unified Process. Although the adoption of use cases proliferated in the context of software systems development, they are not as extensively employed in business modeling . The concept of business use case is not a novelty, but only recently did it begin to re-circulate in the literature and in case tools. This paper examines the issues involved in adopting business use cases for capturing the functionality of an organization and proposes guidelines for their identification, packaging, and mapping to system use cases. The proposed guidelines are based on the principle of actor perception described in the paper. The application of this principle is exemplified with a worked example aimed at demonstrating the utility of the proposed guidelines and at clarifying the application of the principle of actor perception. The worked example is based on a series of workshops run at a major UK financial institution

A review of data visualization: opportunities in manufacturing sequence management.

Data visualization now benefits from developments in technologies that offer innovative ways of presenting complex data. Potentially these have widespread application in communicating the complex information domains typical of manufacturing sequence management environments for global enterprises. In this paper the authors review the visualization functionalities, techniques and applications reported in literature, map these to manufacturing sequence information presentation requirements and identify the opportunities available and likely development paths. Current leading-edge practice in dynamic updating and communication with suppliers is not being exploited in manufacturing sequence management; it could provide significant benefits to manufacturing business. In the context of global manufacturing operations and broad-based user communities with differing needs served by common data sets, tool functionality is generally ahead of user application

Teaching programming at a distance: the Internet software visualization laboratory

This paper describes recent developments in our approach to teaching computer programming in the context of a part-time Masters course taught at a distance. Within our course, students are sent a pack which contains integrated text, software and video course material, using a uniform graphical representation to tell a consistent story of how the programming language works. The students communicate with their tutors over the phone and through surface mail. Through our empirical studies and experience teaching the course we have identified four current problems: (i) students' difficulty mapping between the graphical representations used in the course and the programs to which they relate, (ii) the lack of a conversational context for tutor help provided over the telephone, (iii) helping students who due to their other commitments tend to study at 'unsociable' hours, and (iv) providing software for the constantly changing and expanding range of platforms and operating systems used by students. We hope to alleviate these problems through our Internet Software Visualization Laboratory (ISVL), which supports individual exploration, and both synchronous and asynchronous communication. As a single user, students are aided by the extra mappings provided between the graphical representations used in the course and their computer programs, overcoming the problems of the original notation. ISVL can also be used as a synchronous communication medium whereby one of the users (generally the tutor) can provide an annotated demonstration of a program and its execution, a far richer alternative to technical discussions over the telephone. Finally, ISVL can be used to support asynchronous communication, helping students who work at unsociable hours by allowing the tutor to prepare short educational movies for them to view when convenient. The ISVL environment runs on a conventional web browser and is therefore platform independent, has modest hardware and bandwidth requirements, and is easy to distribute and maintain. Our planned experiments with ISVL will allow us to investigate ways in which new technology can be most appropriately applied in the service of distance education

A visual workspace for constructing hybrid MDS algorithms and coordinating multiple views

Data can be distinguished according to volume, variable types and distribution, and each of these characteristics imposes constraints upon the choice of applicable algorithms for their visualisation. This has led to an abundance of often disparate algorithmic techniques. Previous work has shown that a hybrid algorithmic approach can be successful in addressing the impact of data volume on the feasibility of multidimensional scaling (MDS). This paper presents a system and framework in which a user can easily explore algorithms as well as their hybrid conjunctions and the data flowing through them. Visual programming and a novel algorithmic architecture let the user semi-automatically define data flows and the co-ordination of multiple views of algorithmic and visualisation components. We propose that our approach has two main benefits: significant improvements in run times of MDS algorithms can be achieved, and intermediate views of the data and the visualisation program structure can provide greater insight and control over the visualisation process

Ship product modelling

This paper is a fundamental review of ship product modeling techniques with a focus on determining the state of the art, to identify any shortcomings and propose future directions. The review addresses ship product data representations, product modeling techniques and integration issues, and life phase issues. The most significant development has been the construction of the ship Standard for the Exchange of Product Data (STEP) application protocols. However, difficulty has been observed with respect to the general uptake of the standards, in particular with the application to legacy systems, often resulting in embellishments to the standards and limiting the ability to further exchange the product data. The EXPRESS modeling language is increasingly being superseded by the extensible mark-up language (XML) as a method to map the STEP data, due to its wider support throughout the information technology industry and its more obvious structure and hierarchy. The associated XML files are, however, larger than those produced using the EXPRESS language and make further demands on the already considerable storage required for the ship product model. Seamless integration between legacy applications appears to be difficult to achieve using the current technologies, which often rely on manual interaction for the translation of files. The paper concludes with a discussion of future directions that aim to either solve or alleviate these issues

A comparative analysis of business process modelling techniques

Business process modelling is an increasingly popular research area for both organisations and academia due to its usefulness in facilitating human understanding and communication. Several modelling techniques have been proposed and used to capture the characteristics of business processes. However, available techniques view business processes from different perspectives and have different features and capabilities. Furthermore, to date limited guidelines exist for selecting appropriate modelling techniques based on the characteristics of the problem and its requirements. This paper presents a comparative analysis of some popular business process modelling techniques. The comparative framework is based on five criteria: flexibility, ease of use, understandability, simulation support and scope. The study highlights some of the major paradigmatic differences between the techniques. The proposed framework can serve as the basis for evaluating further modelling techniques and generating selection procedures