On-line recognition of UML diagrams

Abstract

Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams are widely used by software engineers to describe the structure of software systems. Early in the software design cycle, software engineers informally sketch initial UML diagrams on paper or whiteboards. The information provided by these UML diagrams needs to be made available to computer assisted software engineering (CASE) tools. In order to smooth this transition from paper to electronic form, we have developed an online recognition system for UML diagrams. The system accepts input from an electronic whiteboard, a data tablet or a mouse. Efforts have been made to separate the domain-independent and domain-specific parts of the recognition system. The kernel of the system is retargetable, providing a general front end for online recognition of any glyph-based diagram notation. The kernel is extended with UML-specific routines for segmentation, recognition of glyphs, and recognition of glyph relationships.