Download UML Guide

Structural Modeling
In some cases, such a heavyweight requirements analysis may not be necessary or useful. It may be sufficient to describe the software in a word processing document, spreadsheet, or other external file. Or, you may use a custom tool developed in-house. In such
cases, the connections between your development environment and your requirementscapture tool are necessarily looser. Nevertheless, it is desirable to maintain the software
and the external requirements in parallel.
2.2
Structural Modeling
REQUIREMENT
BEHAVIOR
SPECIFICATION,
MODELING
STRUCTURE
IMPLEMENTATION
A program’s structural design describes what its constituent parts are and how they
connect to one another. It does not specify what the interactions among those parts are;
that is the role of a behavioral design. Structural and behavioral design together comprise what is frequently called “the design phase” of a software process. Although it is
true that some degree of requirements analysis will frequently precede a structural or
behavioral design and that some degree of design will likely precede the bulk of the
software implementation, the development process is often more fluid in practice than
the phrase “design phase” might suggest. The above diagram attempts to capture that
2-3
2. Process
You can leverage Constellation’s work unit infrastructure and version control integration
to enable just such situations. By adding your own documents to a work unit’s manifest,
you ensure that they will be stored with your design and implementation and that they
will be checked into and out of version control simultaneously and automatically. For
more information on work units, see Chapter 3.