UML System Types

The UML is used in the development of several types of systems. It always includes any feature of a system in one of its diagrams and is also applied at different stages of development of a system, from the analysis of the requirements specification to completion with the testing stage. Its goal is to describe any type of system in terms of object-oriented diagrams. Of course, the most common use is to create software system models, but UML is also used to represent mechanical systems without any software. Following will be presented different types of systems with their most common features:

Information Systems: Used to store, search, edit and display information to users. Keep large amounts of data with complex relationships, which are stored in banks of relational or object-oriented data.

Technical Systems: Its focus is to maintain and control technical equipment like telecommunications, military equipment or industrial processes. They must have special equipment interfaces and fewer software programming than information systems. Technical systems are generally real-time systems.

Real-time Integrated Systems: Run on simple pieces of hardware integrated into mobile phones, cars, alarms etc. These systems implement low-level programming and require real-time support.

Distributed Systems: Distributed in machines where the data is easily transferred from one machine to another. They require communication mechanisms synchronized to ensure data integrity and are usually built in mechanisms of objects as CORBA, COM / DCOM or Java Beans / RMI.

Software Systems: They define the technical infrastructure that other software use. Operating systems, databases, and user actions that perform low-level actions in the hardware at the same time provide generic interfaces using other software.

Business Systems: System that describes the objectives, specifications (people, computers etc), rules (laws, business strategies etc.) and the current work carried out in the business processes.

It is important to realize that most systems do not have only one of these features listed above, but several of them at the same time. Current information systems, for example, can have both characteristics as a distributed real-time. And the UML modeling supports all of these types of systems, providing the possibility to generate the analysis documentation in any situation. Identifying the type of system, however, ensures greater flexibility and understanding, thus contributing to the data analyzed and documented to be more concise and more credible.

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