A method for reverse engineering UML use case model for websites

Abstract

Problems with inadequately documented or undocumented websites could be alleviated by introducing reverse engineering of UML diagrams. In this paper, the method for reverse engineering UML use case model for websites is presented. It consists of two steps: recording user actions in the analyzed website, and then transforming the combination of recorded activity and publicly available HTML code information into UML use case model. This model consists of UML use case diagram and UML activity diagrams describing scenario of each use case. The proposed method is implemented as a Google Chrome plugin named WEB2UML. WEB2UML is able to generate UML use case and activity diagrams in XMI format, compatible with MagicDraw UML CASE tool. During experimental evaluation of the WEB2UML tool, two UML use case models were reverse engineered: one for moodle. if.ktu.lt website and another for researchgate.net website. The quality of generated models was evaluated using an anonymous questionnaire completed by 13 UML modelling experts. The results of expert evaluation are encouraging: in total, average expert evaluation score was 8,4 in a scale of ten.