Abstract
The first diagrammatic notation used in software engineering represented the concept of flow. This paper considers the factors that affected the apparent departure of the flowchart from software engineering practice during the 1970s and 1980s and its subsequent return in the 1990s. A new emphasis on hierarchy (as level of abstraction) and on data structure meant that the general concept of flow was completely superseded, only to re-emerge later as a new duality of control flow and data flow. This reappearance took a variety of forms with varying semantics until its stabilisation in the latest version of the Unified Modeling Language. Flow is there re-instated as a fundamental concept in software engineering although its importance, and that of the activity diagram used to represent it, diminished as a consequence of its becoming just one among a wider set of paradigms for software systems development, each associated with its own diagrams.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Morris, S.J., Gotel, O.C.Z.: Flow Diagrams: Rise and Fall of the First Software Engineering Notation. In: Barker-Plummer, D., Cox, R., Swoboda, N. (eds.) Diagrams 2006. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4045, pp. 130–144. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Morris, S., Gotel, O.: The role of flow charts in the early automation of applied mathematics. BSHM Bulletin. Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics 26(1) (2011)
Woodger, M.: The aims of structured programming. In: Structured Programming. Infotech State of the Art Report. Infotech International Limited, Maidenhead (1976)
Infotech Management Report Structured Programming Practice and Experience. Vol. 1: Management Guide to Techniques and Implementation Vol. 2: Management Report on Implementation Practice. Infotech International Limited, Maidenhead (1978)
Infotech International Survey Structured Programming Practice and Experience. Vol. 1: Overview of Structured Programming Vol. 2: Structured Programming Methodologies and Techniques Vol. 3: International Survey and Analysis of User Experience. Infotech International Limited, Maidenhead (1978)
Böhm, C., Jacopini, G.: Flow diagrams, Turing machines and languages with only two formation rules. Communications of the ACM 9(5) (May 1966)
Knuth, D.E.: The art of computer programming - fundamental algorithms. Addison Wesley, Reading (1968)
Chapin, N.: Flowcharting with the ANSI standard. A tutorial. Computing Surveys 2(2), 119–146 (1970)
International Organization for Standardization. Information Processing - Flowchart symbols. ISO 1028 (1973)
Dill, J.M., Hopson, R.W., Dixon, D.F.: Design and documentation standards. Brown University, Providence (1975)
Nassi, I., Shneiderman, B.: Flowchart techniques for structured programming. SIGPLAN Notices 8(8) (August 1973)
Jackson, M.A.: Principles of Program Design. Academic Press, Orlando (1975)
Jackson, M.A.: Data structures as a basis for program design. In: Structured Programming. Infotech State of the Art Report. Infotech International Limited, Maidenhead (1976)
HIPO - A Design Aid and Documentation Tool. Poughkeepsie, NY, IBM Corporation, Form SR20 - 9413 (1973)
Davis, A.M.: Software Requirements Analysis and Specification. Prentice-Hall International, Englewood Cliffs (1990)
Dahl, O.-J., Dikstra, E.W., Hoare, C.A.R.: Structured Programming. Academic Press, London (1972)
Unified Method V0.8. Rational Software Corporation, Santa Clara (October 1995)
Booch, G., Jacobson, I., Rumbaugh, J.: The Unified Modeling Language for Object-Oriented Development. Documentation Set Version 0.91 Addendum. Rational Software Corporation, Santa Clara (1996)
Object Management Group. OMG Unified Modeling LanguageTM (OMG UML), Version 2.4 (January 2011), http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.4/ (accessed July 26, 2011)
Peterson, J.: Petri Nets. ACM Computing Surveys 9(3) (September 1977)
Unified Modeling Language V1.0. Rational Software Corporation, Santa Clara (January 13, 1997)
International Organization for Standardization. Open Distributed Processing - Unified Modeling Language (UML) Version 1.4.2. ISO/IEC 19501 (2005)
Unified Modeling Language Version 2.0. Object Management Group (August 2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Morris, S.J., Gotel, O.C.Z. (2012). The Diagram of Flow: Its Departure from Software Engineering and Its Return. In: Cox, P., Plimmer, B., Rodgers, P. (eds) Diagrammatic Representation and Inference. Diagrams 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7352. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31223-6_26
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31223-6_26
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-31222-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-31223-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)