Title: The Use of OO-Modelling Principles (OOM) and UML Notation to Define Signalling Requirements
1The Use ofOO-Modelling Principles (OOM) andUML
Notation toDefine Signalling Requirements
ITUWorkshop "Use of Description Techniques"
Geneva,23. Nov. 2002
- Raphael J. Schumacher, Rapporteur Q.8/11Swisscom
AG, Switzerland
2A little story about a personal experience in...
- attempting to motivate the use ofobject-oriented
modelling techniques in SG11 - ...
- advocating the advantages for the experts work
- ...
- the attention achieved in the process
- ...
- observations and conclusions
3Contents
- 1 Introduction
- Preamble
- About Signalling Requirements
- The OOM Story in SG11
- 2 Why OO-Modelling UML
- OO-Analysis -Design (OOA/D)
- OO-Modelling (OOM)
- Telecom vs. Computing
- 3 OOM for BICC Requirements
- Purpose and Benefits
- Existing BICC CS2 Signalling Requirements
- Supplementing BICC Signalling Requirements
- 4 Results Conclusion
- Reception by the meetings
- Personal observations
- Long-term view
Intro OOM BICC Results
4- 1 Introduction
- Preamble
- About Signalling Requirements
- The OOM Story in SG11
- 2 Why OO-Modelling UML
- OO-Analysis -Design (OOA/D)
- OO-Modelling (OOM)
- Telecom vs. Computing
- 3 OOM for BICC Requirements
- Purpose and Benefits
- Existing BICC CS2 Signalling Requirements
- Supplementing BICC Signalling Requirements
- 4 Results Conclusion
- Reception by the meetings
- Personal observations
- Long-term view
Intro OOM BICC Results
5SG11 Signalling Requirements - whats this?
- Question to be answered before protocol
development startsWhat do we expect the
particular signalling protocol to do? - A collection of functional requirements on a
signalling protocol that is destined for specific
purposes and applications - That is, signalling requirements need to
identify... - The context of usage ( equal to an applicability
statement?) - All the scenarios that need to be applicable
- Hence signalling requirements would contain
- Signalling network architecture and functional
elements - Description of network functions that are needed
- Functional elements to be implemented ( !
physical elements) - Ideally...
Intro OOM BICC Results
6The Proposal for SG11
- BICC Capability Set 3 (Bearer Independent Call
Control) - BICC is a framework for providing ISDN services
over transport technologies beyond simply TDM
ATM AAL1, AAL2, IP, MPLS. - In the light of the starting BICC CS3 activity,
further ways to improve the modelling techniques
for envisaged signalling architecture were
seeked. - This resulted in a contribution brought into WP
2/11 at the SG11 meeting in Mai 2001 - Delayed Contribution D.229 2/11Aim to
propagate the idea of using OOM and UML for the
development of signalling requirements
Intro OOM BICC Results
7- 1 Introduction
- Preamble
- Story line
- About myself and SG11
- 2 Why OO-Modelling UML
- OO-Analysis -Design (OOA/D)
- OO-Modelling (OOM)
- Telecom vs. Computing
- 3 OOM for BICC Requirements
- Purpose and Benefits
- Existing BICC CS2 Signalling Requirements
- Supplementing BICC Signalling Requirements
- 4 Results Conclusion
- Reception by the meetings
- Personal observations
- Long-term view
Intro OOM BICC Results
8Object-Oriented Analysis Design (OOA/D)
- A very, very little history
- late 1980s OO programming languages (Smalltalk,
C) - early 1990s OOA/D techniques (Booch, Rumbaugh,
Jacobson, ...) - late 1990s joint effort to develop the UML
standard adopted by OMG - OOAD as conceptual tool was originally directly
associated with software development - OOAAnalysing a system and its environment, as
well as the requirements on the system, seen from
a users perspective - OODDocumentation on the concept, and the design
of the implementation ( the inside of the
system) - UML UML as notation standard UML tools with the
purpose to automatically create program code out
of the object-oriented models.
Intro OOM BICC Results
9Object-Oriented Modelling (OOM)
- Simply going beyond the purpose of developing
software - OOA, OOD UML are description techniques, thus
probably also applicable for other things than
software development. - Meanwhile, modelling is used in many areas, e.g.
- Business engineering modelling of enterprises in
terms of purpose, processes and organisational
entities - Service development service components and their
associations amongst themselves as well to
network capabilities - Database design data warehouses data
structures, specifications for data mining and
information exchange (XML/DTD) - Telecom Operations Map (TOM) a framework for a
process architecture suitable to
telecommunications service providers - Network Management Systems managed objects
(MIBs) - ? Why not make profit from OOM UML in ITU
efforts as well?
Intro OOM BICC Results
10Telecommunication vs. Computing
- Telecommunication computing industry is
converging - How will the demarcation line look like in -
lets say - 5 years? - A grey area by best...
- Who will be faced to communication standards in
future? - SW developers incorporating telecom modules into
vertical products - Integrators struggling with service convergence
- ? telecommunication services wont remain
stand-alone products - As a consequence, the dominant customers of ITU
standards will more and more be... - software engineers for whom OOM has become
everyday practise - service providers which need to cope with the
increased complexity - Telecom services convergence, a long-term
business need - ? consolidating portfolios require clean
concepts, interfaces APIs
Intro OOM BICC Results
11- 1 Introduction
- Preamble
- Story line
- About myself and SG11
- 2 Why OO-Modelling UML
- OO-Analysis -Design (OOA/D)
- OO-Modelling (OOM)
- Telecom vs. Computing
- 3 OOM for BICC Requirements
- Purpose and Benefits
- Existing BICC CS2 Signalling Requirements
- Supplementing BICC Signalling Requirements
- 4 Results Conclusion
- Reception by the meetings
- Personal observations
- Long-term view
Intro OOM BICC Results
12OOM _at_ BICC Purpose and Benefits
- OOM can be used to
- define processes and information flows
- identify relationships between processes and
information - increase the degree of reuse (protocol)
requirements and components
- Benefits
- further refine the scope of BICC capabilities and
their protocols - improve the common understanding of terminology
- improved documentation of BICC and its evolution
(CS1..CS3) - improve quality control and consistency check on
protocol designs - trace protocol standardisation (from reqs to
test specifications)
Intro OOM BICC Results
13Existing BICC CS2 Signalling Requirements
Intro OOM BICC Results
Scope of Signalling Requirements
14Supplementing BICC Signalling Requirements 1/6
- Overall Requirements
- Use Cases -gt helps to refine scope
Intro OOM BICC Results
15Supplementing BICC Signalling Requirements 2/6
- Information Flows
- Use Case -gt overview of scenarios
Intro OOM BICC Results
16Supplementing BICC Signalling Requirements 3/6
Information Model Class diagrams -gt
improve understanding the principle idea of BICC
Intro OOM BICC Results
17Supplementing BICC Signalling Requirements 4/6
Information Model further refined class diagra
ms
Intro OOM BICC Results
18Supplementing BICC Signalling Requirements 5/6
Zooming into individual BICC components Pl
ay it again Sam!, and
Intro OOM BICC Results
19Supplementing BICC Signalling Requirements 5/6
- And thered be much more to be modelled!
Intro OOM BICC Results
20- 1 Introduction
- Preamble
- Story line
- About myself and SG11
- 2 Why OO-Modelling UML
- OO-Analysis -Design (OOA/D)
- OO-Modelling (OOM)
- Telecom vs. Computing
- 3 OOM for BICC Requirements
- Purpose and Benefits
- Existing BICC CS2 Signalling Requirements
- Supplementing BICC Signalling Requirements
- 4 Results Conclusion
- Reception by the meetings
- Personal observations
- Long-term view
Intro OOM BICC Results
21Reception by the Meeting (of WP 2/11)
- Achieved Interest
- Remarkable interest shown by SG11 management
- Moderate interest seen from participants
progressing work - Gap between S.P. and Suppliers
- Statement of Scepticism
- Nice, but do we really need this?
- Learning curve steep enough?
- Return on investment?
- UML not a bit too formal?
- Possible Reasons for Spectisism
- (Past) Experiences with Notations
- SDLWidely adopted within SG11 (protocol
standards, typically specifying the state
machines), but applied in the right way? - TTCNratio of sophistication vs. value was not
perceived to be very promising to individuals - Little popularity of concept work
- With IP, everything is easier
Intro OOM BICC Results
22Personal Observations
- Contemporary factors
- Time pressure
- -gt get out standards fast
- Little resources available
- -gt reduce efforts to the minimum
- Increased Fluctuation
- -gt people change,know-how changes...
- Current quality control system
- -gt iterative approach changes to standards as
implementers discover imperfect parts
- Hidden factors
- Conceptual work
- generally having a hard time
- benefits not convincing enough
- ITU hidden lawA playground for different
parties with particular interests. Lobbying e.g.
to... - advocate a specific solution
- slow down progress of work?
- -gt often, full transparency is not necessarily
desired - -gt poisons top down approaches
Intro OOM BICC Results
23Personal Long-term Views
- Think positive!
- Complexity in telecom will continue to increase
- -gt a common understanding of technical and
conceptual issues is indispensable - Parties with particular interest in transparency
- Governmentsregulation, lawful interception
- Service Providersservice convergence challenge,
cope with network complexity
- Summing up
- Need for conceptual work
- still an indisputable necessity
- adoption of new techniques takes a lot of
time-gt patience with optimism - Factors for success/failure
- on actual participation (parties)
- market pressures (competition)
- the mood of telecom business
- ? Better days will be coming again
Intro OOM BICC Results
24Thank you! ...and enjoy your stay in Switzerland
...despite the ?!ç/ weather!
coffee breaknow?
psst!
25Supplemental
BACKUP
26Links Book References 1/2
- OOA/D
- http//www.sdmagazine.com/articles/1999/0006/0006a
/0006a.htm - Building Object Applications That Work Your
Step-By-Step Handbook for Developing Robust
Systems with Object Technology by Scott W.
Ambler (Cambridge University Press, 1998) - OOM
- http//www.ambysoft.com/eCommerceArchitecture.html
- http//www.sdmagazine.com/articles/1999/0004/0004o
/0004o.htm - Business Engineering With Object Technology by
David Taylor (John Wiley and Sons, 1995) - Enterprise Modelling with UML by Chris Marshall
(Addison-Wesley, Object Technology series, 1999)
Intro OOM BICC Results
27Links Book References 2/2
- UML
- http//www.omg.org/uml
- http//www.rational.com/uml
- The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual
by Grady Booch, James Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson
(Addison-Wesley, Object Technology Series, 1999) - The Unified Modeling Language User Guide by
Grady Booch, James Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson
(Addison-Wesley, Object Technology Series, 1999)
Intro OOM BICC Results