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An Empirical Study of the Nesting Level of Composite States Within UML Statechart Diagrams

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Perspectives in Conceptual Modeling (ER 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 3770))

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Abstract

As UML statechart diagrams are the core for modeling the dynamic aspects of software systems, we have been studying their understandability for the last three years. In previous researches, we have already studied the relationship between many of the constructs of the UML statechart diagrams and the effect that they have on the understandability of the diagrams themselves. We have also performed a family of experiments whose results indicated that the use of composite states make UML statechart diagrams easier to understand. This fact motivated us to go a step further and investigate if the Nesting Level of Composites States (NLCS) has an impact on the understanding of the diagrams through a controlled experiment and a replication. In this paper, we present the experimental process and the main findings of them. Unfortunately, the obtained results are not quite conclusive and we have not been able to find an optimal use of nesting within UML statechart diagrams and further empirical research is needed, considering more complex UML statechart diagrams.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ALARCOS Research Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Castilla – La Mancha, Paseo de la Universidad, 4, 13071, Ciudad Real, Spain

    José A. Cruz-Lemus, Marcela Genero & Mario Piattini

  2. Software Engineering Research Group, Department of Computer Science and Systems, University of Murcia, Campus de Espinardo, 30071, Murcia, Spain

    Ambrosio Toval

Authors
  1. José A. Cruz-Lemus
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  2. Marcela Genero
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  3. Mario Piattini
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  4. Ambrosio Toval
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers and INT, France

    Jacky Akoka

  2. Information Systems Department, Brigham Young Univeristy, 84602, Provo, Utah, U.S.A.

    Stephen W. Liddle

  3. College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel University, USA

    Il-Yeol Song

  4. University College, Dublin, Ireland

    Michela Bertolotto

  5. CEDRIC-CNAM and ESSEC,  

    Isabelle Comyn-Wattiau

  6. Infolab, Tilburg University, PO Box 90158, 5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Willem-Jan van den Heuvel

  7. ISYS- Information Systems Research Unit, IAG-Louvain School of Management, Université catholique de Louvain, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Manuel Kolp

  8. Department of Software and Computing Systems, University of Alicante, Spain

    Juan Trujillo

  9. Institute for Applied Informatics, Alpen-Adria-Universität, Klagenfurt, Austria

    Christian Kop  & Heinrich C. Mayr  & 

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Cruz-Lemus, J.A., Genero, M., Piattini, M., Toval, A. (2005). An Empirical Study of the Nesting Level of Composite States Within UML Statechart Diagrams. In: Akoka, J., et al. Perspectives in Conceptual Modeling. ER 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3770. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11568346_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11568346_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-29395-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32239-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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