Requirements Requirements Requirements
on
How Do You Use UML?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
For me, UML is for expressing requirements - you are not designing your program in advance - you are expressing in a formal way what you want the program to achieve in advance - if your requirements are non-complex and you can accept escalation (scope-creep) then go ahead and use rule of thumb, works fine for lots of people, but for managing huge projects, the problems rarely lie but rather in the expression of requirements.
Even for a simple project, interconnected use cases with pre and post conditions is a far better than english prose. It also gives you a nice mental model to hang the code off to make sure that you are solving the right problem.
For more complex behaviour UML Activity Diagrams help greatly, the combination of use case and activity diagram creates an excellent way to decompose behaviour. Adding class models with constraints goes even further defining data and rules that give a head start into the development. The rule is to capture the essence.
That requirements will change is a given fact of life, but with an MDA approach, the impact of those changes have a better chance of being managed and costed properly.
Best thing is that once you have completed the requirements model, you have a re-usable system description. Since technology changes are v. expensive re-inplementations of existing functionality on a new platform, the base requirements in a non machine/language specific form are worth real and serious money to your company.
Leave development for the developers (or in XP, RAD or @home, for when you don your developer's hat). Use UML to express requirements and let the programmers work out the best implementation with current tools and tech. - that's what they're paid for.
This is the fundamental approach of MDA (model driven Architecture) - though I reckon the OMG's MDA approach might go a little too far down the RTE (round trip engineering) path to give truly useful expression of requirements.
So the UML models tied with a good requirements system (we're using Telelogic DOORS - there are many others, but DOORS came out top for our needs)
now, back to modelling the requirements for a requirements system - talk about fead huck...
Someone is reputed to have said "Nobody would ever need more than 640K of memory"! With advancing technology everything always gets better by a factor of 2. 8,16,32,64 each time with substantial performance improvement. If you are in the market for a new computer IMO it's crazy NOT to get a 64bit processor. If you're happy with old hardware of course, no-one is telling you to change... disclaimer: Santa brought me a lovely AMD63 3500+ to plug into my Asus A8N-SLI motherboard - yum!
If "safe" prions could be harnessed or even engineered and a human could be placed in an environment that would stress their inbuilt abilities - eg space travel, it must be possible to pass on the "benefits" of their MACRO evolution to the next generation - perhpas getting rid of legs or whatever else would suit long term space dwellers.
Imagine a ship travelling to our nearest neigbouring star, it would take several generations for us to reach there so the colonists when they arrived wouldn't actually be "human" like we are!
Now if we can work out the environment on the alien planet before we send off the ship, we could engineer the prion/environment to force evolution's hand to create the modifications required to live in the environment they're going to.
Google's business is selling advertisements. We get the fringe benefit of having the search engine, but their perfectly transparent business model is selling those advertisements.
With that in our mind, it's easy to see why Google would do anything asked of it and co-operate with chinese government demands to filter content. They offer their services to users, they collect their revenue from Advertisers.
Presumably even limited as it is, Google is still the best in China.
What I'd like to know is can I also access that filtered content?
I bet it's a lot better for kids than normal google is...
Slackware was my first distro too can't remember the version, but it was pre version 1 - old man:-(. I've just installed Vector Linux 4.0 on my laptop and on an older desktop - it's a good way into a fast efficient no-frills linux system. I'm a windows developer so my work laptop is a w2k machine, to make it bearable I've installed niceties such as bash, gvim and perl. You could use Bochs machine emulator to run w2k under linux. If you dual boot, you can use thunderbird email on a dual boot system with a single mailbox.
Vector linux is easy to install and configure, forget all the folks who think a gui is essential for everything, as a windows developer you'll already know how to hack your way through the registry and various config files. That's all you need to do with slackware too.
Your mileage may vary...
A Practical Guide to Feature-Driven Development by Stephen Palmer and John Felsing
Reading _and_ using this one right now - has changed my whole approach to software development and delivery
Code Complete by Steve McConnell
A common sense approach to software development - a bit dated nowadays and too rigid for real use, but excellent tips and tricks throughout - not language specific
Designing With Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman
An excellent introduction into modern web markup, how to write markup once that will work everywhere - has literally changed my daily toil.
I don't know about the usability aspects of the palm desktop for the mac, but it certainly looks very pretty - I'm very envious of the system wide address book that the mac sports.
This is news to me! I use my palm desktop software for contact management and I'm quite happy with it/reluctant to change, but I like the fact that my happy pair of Firebird and Thunderbird could be complimented by Sunbird (probably to be changed to Fitbird or such...)
I'll download it tonight and give it a whirl, I seem to remember a palm sync thing with old netscape so I'm presuming this is still possible...
It does look a bit ugly right enough, a new theme based on firefox/thunderbird would be welcome.
I kind of know what you mean, but to tell the truth, I don't want something that scales up to my resolution and looks huge on the screen (like a pdf does with the new windows viewer - yuk.)
Clever use of CSS should allow more content to show when more space is available - rather than just making the existing content bigger.
>If you're not fast and accurate enough
>to do it by ear, you're probably not
>ready to be playing around with it...
Hmmm, yeah like Jimmy Page...
What's the problem with using this tech just because it exists and its easier than doing something manual yourself??
Concert Pitch Tuning is not an "art" in itself - it's just a necessary evil (that's why those fat guys who come on and do it at the start of a gig don't get paid much)
I stopped taking caffeine about 1 year ago (as an asides have also stopped taking nicoteen for about a month). I agree fully with what you say about caffeine, but coffee can still be a nice drink.
For instant, I drink Clipper Organic Instant Coffee, it's organic, decaf and fair trade - 3 gulps of self righteousness free with every sip.
This decaffeinated version of Clipper's Award Winning Organic Instant Coffee is made from the same 100% Arabica Highland Coffee Beans, giving a wonderfully smooth and rich cup of coffee. The Organic certification guarantees the decaffeination process employed is a totally natural one, eliminating the worry about chemical residues.
I've got a GREAT idea, lets create an online training shoe store and then instead of targetting sporty people with our ads, use a bunch of nerds dressed up in trackies to advertise them. No-one will want to look like the guys in the ad so no-one will come to buy anything. But all the venture capital money will be in the bank and we can sell the idea before it goes down the pan! What? 2004 you say... I've been in a coma for how long?
btw - for comfy footwear I'd also recommend Birkenstock but only if you don't mind looking like a total and utter geekboy.
pahz-icks vs poh-six?
I pronounce it pause-icks
I thought that everyone did.
though it does say pahz-icks as in positive, so unless Richard S' American accent is making the word "positive" sound like "pazitive" - it's probably the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
For me, UML is for expressing requirements - you are not designing your program in advance - you are expressing in a formal way what you want the program to achieve in advance - if your requirements are non-complex and you can accept escalation (scope-creep) then go ahead and use rule of thumb, works fine for lots of people, but for managing huge projects, the problems rarely lie but rather in the expression of requirements. Even for a simple project, interconnected use cases with pre and post conditions is a far better than english prose. It also gives you a nice mental model to hang the code off to make sure that you are solving the right problem. For more complex behaviour UML Activity Diagrams help greatly, the combination of use case and activity diagram creates an excellent way to decompose behaviour. Adding class models with constraints goes even further defining data and rules that give a head start into the development. The rule is to capture the essence. That requirements will change is a given fact of life, but with an MDA approach, the impact of those changes have a better chance of being managed and costed properly. Best thing is that once you have completed the requirements model, you have a re-usable system description. Since technology changes are v. expensive re-inplementations of existing functionality on a new platform, the base requirements in a non machine/language specific form are worth real and serious money to your company. Leave development for the developers (or in XP, RAD or @home, for when you don your developer's hat). Use UML to express requirements and let the programmers work out the best implementation with current tools and tech. - that's what they're paid for. This is the fundamental approach of MDA (model driven Architecture) - though I reckon the OMG's MDA approach might go a little too far down the RTE (round trip engineering) path to give truly useful expression of requirements. So the UML models tied with a good requirements system (we're using Telelogic DOORS - there are many others, but DOORS came out top for our needs) now, back to modelling the requirements for a requirements system - talk about fead huck...
Someone is reputed to have said "Nobody would ever need more than 640K of memory" ! With advancing technology everything always gets better by a factor of 2. 8,16,32,64 each time with substantial performance improvement. If you are in the market for a new computer IMO it's crazy NOT to get a 64bit processor. If you're happy with old hardware of course, no-one is telling you to change...
disclaimer: Santa brought me a lovely AMD63 3500+ to plug into my Asus A8N-SLI motherboard - yum!
though of course, the whole of Firefox *is* a small installer anyway!
My parents got me this for my 6th birthday... I've still got it!
A watched erection never returns...
ads? use firefox! http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
alcutaly...
esay to raed this, yuor bairn raeogenosris the wdors ilstef!
If you need practive with your anagrams, you could do worse than play my anagram game!
Anagramarama!
</shameless_PLUG>
Iedned, it's vrey esay to raed tihs yuor biarn raeogenosris the wdors ilstef!
If "safe" prions could be harnessed or even engineered and a human could be placed in an environment that would stress their inbuilt abilities - eg space travel, it must be possible to pass on the "benefits" of their MACRO evolution to the next generation - perhpas getting rid of legs or whatever else would suit long term space dwellers.
Imagine a ship travelling to our nearest neigbouring star, it would take several generations for us to reach there so the colonists when they arrived wouldn't actually be "human" like we are!
Now if we can work out the environment on the alien planet before we send off the ship, we could engineer the prion/environment to force evolution's hand to create the modifications required to live in the environment they're going to.
I feel a novel coming on!
I did rtfa as you put it.
Google _would_ do anything asked of it and co-operate with chinese government demands to filter content
Still might happen...
Google's business is selling advertisements. We get the fringe benefit of having the search engine, but their perfectly transparent business model is selling those advertisements.
With that in our mind, it's easy to see why Google would do anything asked of it and co-operate with chinese government demands to filter content. They offer their services to users, they collect their revenue from Advertisers.
Presumably even limited as it is, Google is still the best in China.
What I'd like to know is can I also access that filtered content?
I bet it's a lot better for kids than normal google is...
>And for those of you who enjoy commercial breaks so you can run and get more chips...
You'd need to live really close to the chip shop for that!
Think I'll be using All The Web for a while, you know you lose trust in something...
Cheap plug and it's not even ported to the mac yet (any takers???) Anagramarama Simple Addictive Fun
Slackware was my first distro too can't remember the version, but it was pre version 1 - old man :-(.
I've just installed Vector Linux 4.0 on my laptop and on an older desktop - it's a good way into a fast efficient no-frills linux system. I'm a windows developer so my work laptop is a w2k machine, to make it bearable I've installed niceties such as bash, gvim and perl. You could use Bochs machine emulator to run w2k under linux. If you dual boot, you can use thunderbird email on a dual boot system with a single mailbox.
Vector linux is easy to install and configure, forget all the folks who think a gui is essential for everything, as a windows developer you'll already know how to hack your way through the registry and various config files. That's all you need to do with slackware too.
Your mileage may vary... A Practical Guide to Feature-Driven Development by Stephen Palmer and John Felsing Reading _and_ using this one right now - has changed my whole approach to software development and delivery Code Complete by Steve McConnell A common sense approach to software development - a bit dated nowadays and too rigid for real use, but excellent tips and tricks throughout - not language specific Designing With Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman An excellent introduction into modern web markup, how to write markup once that will work everywhere - has literally changed my daily toil.
I don't know about the usability aspects of the palm desktop for the mac, but it certainly looks very pretty - I'm very envious of the system wide address book that the mac sports.
This is news to me! I use my palm desktop software for contact management and I'm quite happy with it/reluctant to change, but I like the fact that my happy pair of Firebird and Thunderbird could be complimented by Sunbird (probably to be changed to Fitbird or such...)
I'll download it tonight and give it a whirl, I seem to remember a palm sync thing with old netscape so I'm presuming this is still possible...
It does look a bit ugly right enough, a new theme based on firefox/thunderbird would be welcome.
I kind of know what you mean, but to tell the truth, I don't want something that scales up to my resolution and looks huge on the screen (like a pdf does with the new windows viewer - yuk.) Clever use of CSS should allow more content to show when more space is available - rather than just making the existing content bigger.
>If you're not fast and accurate enough >to do it by ear, you're probably not >ready to be playing around with it...
Hmmm, yeah like Jimmy Page...
What's the problem with using this tech just because it exists and its easier than doing something manual yourself??
Concert Pitch Tuning is not an "art" in itself - it's just a necessary evil (that's why those fat guys who come on and do it at the start of a gig don't get paid much)
I stopped taking caffeine about 1 year ago (as an asides have also stopped taking nicoteen for about a month). I agree fully with what you say about caffeine, but coffee can still be a nice drink.
For instant, I drink Clipper Organic Instant Coffee, it's organic, decaf and fair trade - 3 gulps of self righteousness free with every sip.
But don't take my word for it...
No. 52 Organic Instant Decaffeinated Coffee 100g
Winner: Great Taste Award 2001
Commended: Organic Food Awards 2000
This decaffeinated version of Clipper's Award Winning Organic Instant Coffee is made from the same 100% Arabica Highland Coffee Beans, giving a wonderfully smooth and rich cup of coffee. The Organic certification guarantees the decaffeination process employed is a totally natural one, eliminating the worry about chemical residues.
I've got a GREAT idea, lets create an online training shoe store and then instead of targetting sporty people with our ads, use a bunch of nerds dressed up in trackies to advertise them. No-one will want to look like the guys in the ad so no-one will come to buy anything. But all the venture capital money will be in the bank and we can sell the idea before it goes down the pan! What? 2004 you say... I've been in a coma for how long?
btw - for comfy footwear I'd also recommend Birkenstock but only if you don't mind looking like a total and utter geekboy.
Another Example
This one is slightly different because different people take different meanings from it, but they all tend to be rather weird.
POSIX pronounciation...
pahz-icks vs poh-six?
I pronounce it pause-icks
I thought that everyone did.
though it does say pahz-icks as in positive, so unless Richard S' American accent is making the word "positive" sound like "pazitive" - it's probably the same thing.