a)In your own words, briefly describe what is modelled in a Sequence Diagram, and how Sequence Diagrams can be useful in systems analysis and design
b)Draw a Sequence Diagram for the use case in your diagram that corresponds most closely to the use case ‘Record New Tour’. This should include all control, boundary and entity objects involved in the scenario and the sequence of interactions that take place in order to meet the system requirements. Your diagram should be drawn using the Enterprise Architect software, and copied and inserted as a picture into your document.
c) Write a brief summary of the decisions made whilst drawing the diagram, and your reasons for making those
Answer:
Use Case Realisation for the ‘Record New Tour’ Use Case
The class diagram can be considered as the static diagram. The application’s static view is represented through the class diagram. The class diagram is used for describing the operations and attributes of individual classes (Kar 2014). Class diagrams are mapped directly with object oriented languages. Within coder community, it is considered to be the most powerful UML diagram. This diagram entails the system’s responsibility. It serves as the base of the component and deployment diagrams. Forward and reverse engineering can be applied to the class diagram.
The tour leader will be among the tourists is the first assumption that has been made during the development of the Class diagram. A tour leader will be assigned to a single tour. There will be several tourists booked for a tour. All the information that will be provided by the tour leader will be stored in the tour class. It will be assumed that the venue and hotels will be chosen by the tour leader but the driver will be provided by the Wide World Tour Management System. More than a single hotel can be booked by the tour leader. In terms of long tours more than one venue can be selected. The personal information will be stored in the system for future purposes. The main reason for choosing start and end date attributes for hotel and driver is that those dates will not be same as tour beginning and end date.
Communication diagram or often distinguished as collaboration diagram is a type of Unified Modelling Language or UML diagram that visualizes the interaction among the objects of the class diagram. This communication is done through the sequence of message transfer in a free-form procedure (Dennis, Wixom and Tegarden 2015). It is corresponding, or converted to, simple sequence diagram with no structured mechanism like interaction utilizes and collaborated fragments. The communication diagram is consist of frame, lifeline and message. The frame holds the whole communication diagram within it. In the top-left corner of the frame, the name of the compartment. The messages flow from one lifeline to another.
The customers or tourists will be booking tours through online site only. The tour leader will be accessing all the data regarding tour and book the tour by himself/herself. At the time of booking, the tour leader will be imputing the name of the venue and date of journey. Then the system will search in the database whether providing service during those days is possible or not. The confirmation of booking will be done after selecting all the hotels and venue to travel. If two tour leader select same accommodation, the first one to confirm will get the service. However, the selected resources will be available to book if the payment is not done within two hours. If the payment is not done then the tourists who has set that hotel or venue as wish-list will get a notification through message. The system will be assigning driver, the tour leader will not have the option of selecting the driver.
Various system analysts use the sequence diagram, a well-known dynamic modelling solution. These diagrams allows the analysts to concentrate on the life-lines of the objects of a class. The communication is done through functions between the objects. The details of the Use Case (part of UML), are properly provided into the sequence diagram (Ahmar, Pallec and Gerard 2016). Through this diagram, modelling the appropriate functions, procedures and operations can be done. This visualizes the movement of the tasks among the components or objects of a procedure.
The sequence diagram has been made with the reference to the class diagram. The booking and confirmation are two connected but different processes. The booking process initiates with the tour leader request to the system to book a tour. In every process of assigning a resource against the tour, the system performs an availability checking. This checking is done by the system automatically. The system will show only the available venue and hotels so that the time of booking process can be reduced. The system will assign a driver automatically, the tour leader will not be able to choose the driver. If everything goes well then the system will ask the tour leader to confirm booking.
Evaluation
Definition: Case is the abbreviate version of Computer Aided Software Engineering. It is an application that provide support single or several software engineering processes. These processes are part of a software development procedure (Elkind, Card and Hochberg 2014). In order to implement a software within Wide World Tour Management System, various correlated and distinct activities are executed.
Description of Case Tool Offerings: The case tools can be referred to as the software engineering tools that assist in collaborative software implementation and maintenance. Most of the phases of the SDLC are supported by the CASE tools in the system analysis and design paradigm. Moreover, the structured system design and analysis process is done using the case tools (Montalvo et al. 2014). The case tools assist the following procedures of development phase generating dataflow models, creating top-level design, test case development, communication establishment between models and requirements and functional description. The dataflow models like data flow diagram will be able to visualize the flow of data and information within the system. The external entities will be shown in the data flow model. Taken as an example, the dataflow model of Wide World Tour Management System can be shown in three diagrams. The first will be context diagram. This will only show the data flow to and fro from system to external entity. If the context diagram is developed into 0-level data flow diagram. This diagram will be visualizing the first level process like booking and confirmation process. If the diagram is further divided into 1-level data flow diagram then it will show the second level processes (Elkind, Card and Hochberg 2014). The data stores in the DFD diagrams will be showing the parts of database that will store the data.
The top level design like architecture diagram will be assisting the system analyst to understand the base level designing concerns. The whole design of the system will be done to satisfy the architecture needs. The functional description will be assisting the system analysis process of Wide World Tour Management System development through providing description of the functional and non-functional requirements. The functional requirements are the essential part of the system. The non-functional requirements determines the quality of the system. The operations of the system done based on the determined functional requirements. Taken as an example, the functional requirement like booking hotel will be stating that the tour leader will be booking a hotel in the desired venue for a limited period of time.
Case Tool Support the Role of System Analyst: The prime support of the case tool is that it reduces the time consumption to do system analysis. The case tool allow the system analysts to understand the case efficiently and allow to develop the models effectively. The design of the system has a major impact on the quality of the developed system. The case tool aid the system analyst to develop the system designs with utmost quality (Fernandez-Castane et al. 2014). If all the requirements of the system are clear and the scope are well defined then the case tools proves to be very useful for system analyst.
UML Modelling Supports the Analyst/Designer: UML is the abbreviation of Unified Modelling Language, is considered by the system analysts as standardized modelling language. It is consisting of incorporated set of models/diagrams. These diagrams are done to be used within the system development phase. There are seven types of UML diagrams that the system analysts can use for analysing and designing the system (Zedlitz and Luttenberger 2014). The class diagram assists the analyst/designer to identify the objects of the system and what attributes and functions each object will it hold. The ‘figure 1’ shows that the class diagram of record new tour of Wide World Tour Management System. If the whole scenario is converted into class diagram then the entire number objects and attributes of the system can be identified.
The sequence diagram in the ‘figure 3’ has visualized that the communication among the object will be done using functions. The system analysts/designers will be getting aid from the UML sequence diagram regarding identifying the communication among the objects. The UML will also support the analyst/designer to identify the interactions among the actors of the system with the system itself. The interaction’s flow of control can be determined by the system analyst/designer through the interaction overview diagram (Williams, Timmis and Qwarnstrom 2016). The designers can use this diagram as a variant of activity diagram. Therefore, it can be clearly stated that the UML modelling will be supporting the system analyst/designer to identify the internal parts of the proposed system along with the inputs to be provided to system.
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