Visual Modeling
Developing a model for an industrial-strength software system prior to its construction renovation is as essential as having a blueprint for large building. Good models are essential for communication among project teams and to assure architectural soundness. We build models of complex systems because we cannot comprehend any such system in its entirety.
Visual modeling is the process of taking the information from the model and displaying it graphically using a standard set of graphical elements.
A standard is vital to realizing one of the benefits of visual modeling: communication. Communication between users, developers, analysts, testers, managers, and anyone else involved with a project is the primary purpose of visual modeling.
You could accomplish this communication using non-visual (textual) information, but on the whole, humans are visual creatures. We seem to be able to understand complexity better when it is displayed to us visually as opposed to written textually. By producing visual models of a system, we can show how the system works on several levels. We can model the interactions between the users and a system which everyone can understand without even prior knowledge on visual modeling. An example, such as a process of online store purchase process can be explained as a simple visual model as show in the Figure. We can model the interactions of objects within a system.
In the face of increasingly complex systems, visualization and modeling become essential. The UML is a well-defined and widely accepted response to that need. It is the visual modeling language of choice for building object-oriented and component-based systems
