Comparative Study on DFD to UML Diagrams Transformations

Abstract: Most of legacy systems use nowadays were modeled and documented using structured approach. Expansion of these systems in terms of functionality and maintainability requires shift towards object-oriented documentation and design, which has been widely accepted by the industry. In this paper, we present a survey of the existing Data Flow Diagram (DFD) to Unified Modeling language (UML) transformation techniques. We analyze transformation techniques using a set of parameters, identified in the survey. Based on identified parameters, we present an analysis matrix, which describes the strengths and weaknesses of transformation techniques. It is observed that most of the transformation approaches are rule based, which are incomplete and defined at abstract level that does not cover in depth transformation and automation issues. Transformation approaches are data centric, which focuses on data-store for class diagram generation. Very few of the transformation techniques have been applied on case study as a proof of concept, which are not comprehensive and majority of them are partially automated.