(Institutional Affiliation) FORMAL REPORT COMPARING THE USE OF THE Essay

(Institutional Affiliation) FORMAL REPORT COMPARING THE uptake OF THE IDEF METHODOLOGY TO UML - Essay Example1). On the other hand, UML is a modeling language that is most accommodate to the generation of com shake offer-executable platforms/frameworks that encode important elements of software engineering projects. This paper will seek to compare the drill of IDEF to UML by focusing on their applications, nature, and techniques employed in their development. This comparison will be done on the basis of credible and reliable literatures, written and published by authorities on modeling languages and techniques. get word Words IDEF UML graphical modeling methods enterprise engineering projects modeling language The Approach/Rationale of twain Methodologies a) IDEF According to Bernus, Mertins, & Schmidt (1998, pg. 17), the rationale for IDEF is to support modeling activities that are fundamental to body psychoanalysis, design, improvement or integration. b) UML The admittance/ rationale for UML is to act as the dominant, publicly accepted, and like objected oriented visual modeling language, and as a foundation object description language for the offshoot unified enterprise modeling language (UEML) that has been put forward by IFAC/IFIP (Bernus, Mertins, & Schmidt 1998, pg. 17). The Stages of the Systems Development Life Cycle that each Addresses IDEF methodology addresses documentation, design, integration, analysis, understanding, planning, and improvement (Fowler & Scott 2000, pg. 46). Based on the Waterfall model of the formation development life cycle (SDLC), these functions fit into four stages of the SDLC preliminary analysis, system analysis and requirements definition, systems design, integration and testing, and maintenance. On the other hand UML methodology is limited to the systems design phase. During the systems analysis phase, object-oriented analysis (OOA) is performed its output is a conceptual model that is comprised of one (sometimes more) UML class diagram, a practiser-interface mock-up, a group of use cases, and a couple of interaction diagrams. This conceptual model is subsequently used as an input in objected-oriented design during the systems design phase (Lankhorst 2005, pg. 63). The Techniques used for modeling the Processes/Functions of the System (including the similarities and differences between the techniques and their strengths and weaknesses) a) IDEF Techniques IDEF is based on one-third modeling constructs/viewpoints/techniques which learn its approach/rationale. These are i) IDEF0 Function Modeling Method This method was created so as to represent processes or activities (consisting of partially sequenced groups of activities) that are usually executed in a systematic and uniform manner. IDEF0 defines a function as a group of activities that takes specific inputs and, using some mechanism, and based on certain controls, converts the inputs into outputs (Noran 2008, pg. 41). These ICOMs (inputs , controls, outputs and mechanisms) can be employed in the modeling of relationships between a wide electron orbit of activities (Kim 2003, pg. 3). IDEF0 modeling generally begins by defining a context diagram (Kim 2003, pg. 3). This is representative of the systems overall purpose and its interactions with external environments (Kim 2003, pg. 3). Usually, IDEF0 models consist of a hierarchy of connected diagrams that are decomposed systematically thereof encoding semantic data at lower modeling levels. The systematical breakdown brings not only circumstantial but also wide-scope representations of system or environmental activities (Bernus, Mertins, & Schmidt 1998, pg. 29). ii) IDEF1x Data Modeling Method This method was created to define data models that symbolize both the semantics and structure of data that is found in a target system