Foundations and Practices of Unified Modeling Language J.UCS Special Issue

Since the emergence of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) in 1996, the UML has become the de-facto standard language for modeling software systems and been widely used in various areas including enterprise information systems, web applications, and business modeling. The extension mechanisms in the UML further stretch its application to specific domains such as the security domain and the distributed domain by allowing one to define domain specific elements. The recent version of UML 2.0 has become more voluminous and detailed to support various aspects of software and a wide range of domains. Although the UML provides various diagrams for capturing different aspects of a software system, not all of them need to be applied in most cases. There exist many extensions of the UML. However, they are often used independently and not well integrated. Therefore, heuristics, design guidelines, and lessons learned from experience are important for the effective use of UML 2.0 and to avoid unnecessary complication. Also, approaches are needed for better managing UML 2.0 and its extensions for synergistic effects of their use and to prevent them from being overly complex. Regarding the specification and use of the UML, since its first edition in 2005, the International Workshop on Foundation and Practices of UML (FP-UML), held in conjunction with the International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER), has become one of the most relevant forums to synergistically connect the research community and industry practitioners in the area of theory and practice of the UML. only 5 papers were accepted. Consolidating theories and foundations of the UML and their applications and experiences, this special issue includes three extended papers invited from FP-UML'09 and seven papers received from an open call for papers. In the three