Graph representation of the nested software structure

Abstract

The use of the UML notation for software specification leads usually to lots of diagrams showing different aspects and components of the software system in a several view. Complex components are constructed by composing in parallel some elementary components and as a result the overall architecture of the system is described as a hierarchical composition of primitive components, which at the execution time may be deployed on distributed environment. The task of specifying such a system quickly becomes unmanageable without the help of some structuring tools. This paper discusses how the UML package's nested structure can be maintained and visualized with the help of a graph transformation mechanism based on the edNLC class of grammar. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.