Programming Is Diagramming Is Programming

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Documenting networks is an essential tool for troubleshooting network problems. The documentation details a network's structure and context, serves as a reference and makes network management more effective. Complex network diagrams are hard to document and maintain and are not guaranteed to reflect reality. They contain many superficial icons (e.g., wall, screen and tower). Defining a single coherent network architecture and topology, similar to engineering schematics, has received great interest. We propose a fundamental approach for methodically specifying a network architecture using a diagramming method to conceptualize the network's structure. The method is called a thinging (abstract) machine, through which the network world is viewed as a single unifying element called the thing/machine (thimac), providing the ontology for modeling the network. To test its viability, the thinging-machine-based methodology was applied to an existing computer network to produce a single integrated, diagrammatic representation that incorporates communication, software and hardware. The resultant description shows a viable, coherent depiction that can replace the current methods.

Section: Overview Of the Papermentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Document Computer Networks

Al-Fedaghi¹,

Behbehani²

2020

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“…The static description of Fig. 14 can be converted into a program in any programming language (e.g., to C++, as described in Al-Fedaghi and Haidar, 2019). It is also used to identify the events.…”

Section: Applying the Tm Model To A Case Study: Tendering Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinging-Based Conceptual Modeling: Case Study of a Tendering System

Al-Fedaghi¹,

Haidar²

2020

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In computer science, models are made explicit to provide formality and a precise understanding of small, contingent "universes" (e.g., an organization), as constructed from stakeholder requirements. Conceptual modeling is a fundamental discipline in this context whose main concerns are identifying, analyzing and describing the critical concepts of a universe of discourse. In the information systems field, one of the reasons why projects fail is an inability to capture requirements in a way that can be technically used to configure a system. This problem of requirements specification is considered to have "deficiencies in theory". We apply a recently developed model called the Thinging Machine (TM) model which uniformly integrates static and dynamic modeling features to this problem of requirements specification. The object-Oriented (OO) approach to modeling, as applied in Unified Modeling Language, is by far the most applied and accepted standard in software engineering; nevertheless, new notions in the field may enhance and facilitate a supplementary understanding of the OO model itself. We aim to contribute to the field of conceptual modeling by introducing the TM model's philosophical foundation of requirements analysis. The TM model has only five generic processes of things (e.g., objects), in which genericity indicates generality, as in the generic Aristotelian concepts based on abstraction. We show the TM model's viability by applying it to a real business system.

“…The next section presents an enhanced review of the TM that has previously been used in several papers (Al-Fedaghi and Al-Fadhli, 2020;Al-Fedaghi and Behbehani, 2020;Al-Fedaghi and Haidar, 2020;Al-Fedaghi and Al-Otaibi, 2019;Al-Fedaghi and Haidar, 2019). The remaining sections describe how the TM can be applied to FSMs.…”

Section: Structure Of the Papermentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling the Semantics of States and State Machines

Al-Fedaghi¹

2020

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A system's behavior is typically specified through models such as state diagrams that describe how the system should behave. According to researchers, it is not clear what a state actually represents regarding the system to be modeled. Standards do not provide adequate definitions of or sufficient guidance on the use of states. Studies show these inconsistencies can lead to poor or incomplete specifications, which in turn could result in project delays or increase the cost of the system design. This paper aims to establish a precise definition of the notion of states and state machines, a goal motivated by system modelers' (e.g., requirement engineers') need to understand key concepts and vocabulary such as states and state machine, which are major behavioral modeling tools (e.g., in UML). "State" is the main notion of a state machine in which events drive state changes. This raises questions about the nature of these state-related notations. The semantics of these concepts is based on a new modeling methodology called the thinging machine applied to a number of examples of existing models. The thinging machine semantics is founded on five elementary actions that divide the static model into changes/states upon which events are defined.