Shared data modeling with UML-G

Groupware is explicitly designed to support the cooperation among group members. The implementation of cooperation-aware groupware is supported by several object-oriented toolkits and frameworks, but there is no uni®ed way to model applications built on top of these. We have proposed UML-G as an extensible UML pro®le for modeling groupware and are in the process of turning it into a community e€ort. In this article, we identify modeling needs speci®c to shared data modeling. Shared data is a prerequisite to supporting cooperating users. We present UML extensions to address the identi®ed needs as a part of UML-G. Usage scenarios demonstrate how UML-G can be used to assist shared data modeling. UML-G provides explicit modeling of shared data related aspects. In addition, it supports a shared understanding between developers, which is independent of, and thus abstracts from, the latter implementation. CASE tool support for UML-G strengthens its practical relevance.