CODEWITHSUNDEEP
umlplantuml
user3743222
user3743222

Reputation: 18665

How to represent a compound graph using UML notations/diagrams?

I need a tool (preferably online, but at that stage I don't care anymore) which allows me to modelize relationships (similar to BPMN) which can be represented as compound graphs (though most of the times, it will be a simpler nested graph). I can't seem to achieve my goal using BPMN formalism (swimlanes are the closest but they do not allow arbitrary nesting). I am thinking to reuse UML modelization tools but I don't know enough about UML to know if UML covers my use case.

Imagine an integrated circuit which is made of chips connected with wires. So three chips : A,B,C and Chip A -> Chip B, Chip C. Each chip has input ports and output ports, and some of the output ports of A are connected to the input ports of B, some are connected to those of C. Now Chip A itself can be considered as an integrated circuit, and as such can be decomposed in another graph : Chip A :: Chip A.1, Chip A.3 -> Chip A.2. Each Chip A.1 can also be decomposed etc. This is what is called a compound graph. Each node of a compound graph can have children which are themselves graphs.

I do know about the Harel's and UML's statecharts formalism, which allows for hierarchical graphs to describe hierarchical nested state machines (hence any nested graph can potentially be expressed with statechart formalism), though I do not know any online tool which allow to draw statechart. The question is whether UML has a mechanism or tools which allow to specify a compound graph, and if so, what is the nesting mechanism?

Level 1

   -------
---|ChipA|---ChipB---
   |     |---ChipC---
   |-----|

Zoom on Chip A

-----ChipA.1---ChipA.2----   (...linked to ChipB input port
  |--ChipA.3-|         |--   (...linked to ChipC input port

An example of compound graph from the litterature :

enter image description here

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1945

Answers (2)

Pete Kirkham
Pete Kirkham

Reputation: 49311

In response to your comment,

The question is whether UML has a mechanism or tools which allow to specify a compound graph, and if so, what is the nesting mechanism?

At the infrastructure level, it uses the Element::ownedElement association to represent containment. The Namespace::ownedMember associate subsets this association, as do the association between classes and their members, packages and nested packages, components and their contained items, and so on. All of these are conceptually compound graphs, but are not rendered in a similar way to you diagrams.

In terms of you 'Chip made up of chips', the CompositeStructures package in the UML superstructure ( section 9 of the 2.4.1 superstructure ) uses these association to create composites, or for a domain specific example built on top of UML then SysML is the UML dialect created for systems engineering.

A systems engineering block diagram consists of blocks created with ports and connectors; blocks can have internal structure of further network of blocks. The connectors carry flows, whic can be information, energy or matter.

An example block diagram for some plant shows the custom rendering used to show owned elements in the same diagram as their containers: block diagram

See http://www.omgsysml.org/ or http://sysmlforum.com/sysml-faq/ for further information.

Tools for sysml are listed on the http://sysml.tools/ site.

Upvotes: 2

Ister
Ister

Reputation: 6318

Start with the component diagram in UML.

Your chips can be treated as components, ports will be... well, ports ;-) but also you should define some sort of interfaces (functions offered/needed by those ports). As I understand it the arrow direction depicts some sort of dependency (so the chip at the end with arrowhead provides something and thus will have a provided interface while the other end will have a required interface and a proper connection between them).

If a specific port is realised with internal structure you'll use a delegation connector for that.

Upvotes: 1

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