VUML: a viewpoint oriented UML extension

Abstract

One of the main challenges of our modern societies is the development of information systems accessible to every citizen with respect to his culture, rights, education etc. A number of such information systems (servers) are now provided on the Web in e-learning, tourism, environment, health, transport, etc. But the development and the maintenance of those systems are not guided by users' profile (viewpoints) and thus such systems are very difficult to adapt, reuse and maintain when a viewpoint must be added/removed/updated. To meet these requirements, we propose an extension of UML called VUML (View based Unified Modeling Language). VUML provides the concept of multiviews component whose goal is to store and deliver information according to users' viewpoints. A multiviews component consists of a default view and a set of specific views related to the base through an extension relation. This approach allows for dynamic change of viewpoints and offers mechanisms to describe views dependencies. To favor reuse and transition to coding, we propose an implementation generic pattern targeting object-oriented languages.