Can someone suggest me tools/templates and example to draw diagrams for showing information flow in highly event-driven distributed large scale information system. The system consists of heterogenous devices like PC,data-centers,mobile hand-helds, monitoring sensors (like cameras, laser scanners) used by different users and each user generates a multitude of asynchronous events which the business logic interprets, understands and transmits the output genrated back to the users who are required to be informed. UML can do this, but I want to show it to business managers(non-programmers) who do not understand UML concepts.
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21answers:
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A:
Not sure what kind of "information flow" you are talking about. If you want to depict the detailed interaction between the users and the system, and what the dynamics are when the system reacts to the user's input, then I suggest you consider using OPEN/Metis' service state diagrams. You can download the OPEN/Metis whitepaper from the Downloads section in http://www.openmetis.com.
CesarGon
2010-10-08 01:06:11
info flow means business data and user generated events
iceman
2010-10-08 10:00:07
I imagine so. But what level of abstraction? Are you talking about problem-domain information or solution-domain? Do you want to see the system as a black or glass box? Without this kind of details, answering your question is impossible, since there are dozens of approaches to represent "information flow".
CesarGon
2010-10-08 17:00:05
A:
You may want to look at Business Processing Modeling Notation, and Eclipse provides some tools to help with this. I like Eclipse for this mainly because it is an IDE I use, and the price was good for a test
To get more info on BPMN you can look here: http://www.bpmn.org/
I used BPMN as a way to show how information flows thru-out an enterprise for non-programmers to understand how the system would work.
James Black
2010-10-08 01:11:46