Bulldozer00's Blog

I really like the SysML and UML for modeling and reasoning about complex, multi-technology and software-centric systems respectively, but I think they have one glaring shortcoming. They aren’t very good at modeling distributed, multi-process, multi-threaded systems. Why? Because every major element (except for a use case?) is represented as a rectangle. As far as I know, a process can be modeled as either a parallelogram or a stereotyped rectangular UML class (SysML block ):

To better communicate an understanding of multi-threaded, multi-process systems, I’ve created my own graphical “proprietary” (a.k.a. homegrown) symbology. I call it the MML (UML profile). Here is the MML symbol set.

An example MML diagram of a design that I’m working on is shown below. The app-specific modeling element names have been given un-descriptive names like ATx, APx, DBx, Mx for obvious reasons.

Compare this model with the equivalent rectangular UML diagram below. I purposely didn’t use color and made sure it was bland so that you’d answer the following question the way I want you to. Which do you think is more expressive and makes for a better communication and reasoning tool?

If you said “the UML diagram is better“, that’s OK. 🙂