Authors:
Gianna Reggio
;
Maurizio Leotta
;
Filippo Ricca
and
Diego Clerissi
Affiliation:
Università di Genova, Italy
Keyword(s):
UML Usage, Survey, Empirical Study.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
General-Purpose Modeling Languages and Standards
;
Languages, Tools and Architectures
;
Model-Driven Software Development
;
Software Engineering
Abstract:
UML Activity diagrams offer a very large set of constructs, however many of them seem scarcely used or even
their existence is not known. Here, we present a precise view of the usage levels of these constructs by means
of a survey, covering preliminarily books, courses, tutorials, and tools about UML. Results show that, among
the 47 Activity diagrams constructs, a large majority of them seem to be scarcely used, while, only nine result
widely used. This work is part of a larger project aimed at investigating the usage level of the UML diagrams
and their constructs, also by means of a personal opinion survey intended for UML users. UML is really a
huge notation, and as consequence, on one hand, it is difficult and time consuming to master it, and on the
other hand, people tend, naturally, to consider only a part of it; by means of this empirical study we want to
assess what are the most/less used UML diagrams/constructs.