Rational, UML Profile for Business Modeling

This UML profile is a component of the Rational Unified Process® (RUP®). It presents a UML language for capturing Business Models and is supported by the Business Modeling Discipline in the RUP. This profile is intended to enable UML tools to be used in the area of business engineering. This involves diverse disciplines such as business information modeling, business organization modeling, and business process modeling, as well as high-level concept and goal modeling that act as the requirements for the activities of the business. This will form both a foundation for a new class of UML tools and an interchange semantic between existing UML tools and other business engineering tools. The RUP Business Modeling profile has recently been extended and updated to allow for the capture of more information regarding business context and business processes. Early versions of the RUP business modeling discipline were intended for a very basic capture of business information-just enough, to understand the requirements for the development of an application supporting the business. The goal of this update is to broaden the concepts and capabilities of the profile to capture more information and more fidelity in the model. The Business Modeling profile is based on prior work by Rational Software and Objectory, and is also used as an example profile documented in the OMG UML 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 language specifications. Overview of the UML profile for business modeling This section presents the following topics: • Conceptual Model • Structure of the Profile • Identified Subset of the UML developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/ Rational UML Profile for business modeling Page 2 of 22 Conceptual Model The following UML diagram acts as a guide to the profile and demonstrates the important concepts of the profile and the relationships between these concepts. Note that the Conceptual Model follows the same basic structure as the profile itself, use case, domain, and resource models. Figure 1. The conceptual model relationships Structure of the profile Internally, within the definition of the profile, we separate the elements into a number of packages, as shown below. This organization is not reflected in the end-user visible profile but does provide some guidance in how one might structure a model to make best use of the elements we provide. Figure 2. Package structure of the profile The set of packages is organized around the three models that make up the artifacts for the RUP Business Modeling Workflow. Note, however, that in the UML, a profile is a flat namespace when consumed by the user; the packages are therefore for the organization of the profile during its development and have no impact or meaning to the end user of a tool that implements it. Identified subset of the UML ibm.com/developerWorks/ developerWorks® Rational UML Profile for business modeling Page 3 of 22 UML meta-class Stereotypes Actor Business Actor Class Business Entity, Business Goal, Business Worker, Case Worker Collaboration Business Use Case Realization Constraint Business Rule Dependency owner, supports Model Business Use Case Model, Business Analysis Model Package Business System Signal Business Event Use Case Business Use Case Virtual metamodel Business use case model Figure 3. Model Management Figure 4. Assess and Adjust Goals Figure 5. Find Business Use Cases developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/ Rational UML Profile for business modeling Page 4 of 22 "stereotype" Business Actor Extends "metaClass" Actor Semantics Defines a set of business-actor instances (someone or something outside the business that interacts with the business), in which each business-actor instance plays the same role in relation to the business. It is important that a business actor represent some participant outside of the scope of the business and, therefore, have an understanding of only the externally visible behavior of the business. Tagged values Kind Name Type Documentation Attribute Characteristics String Used primarily for human business actors, who will act as customers or vendors to the organization: The physical environment of the business actor, the number of individuals the business actor represents, the business actor's level of domain knowledge, the business actor's level of computer experience, other applications the business actor is using, and other general characteristics such as gender, age, cultural background, etc.