Designing Procedural 4GL Applications through UML Modeling

Abstract: This paper presents a Unified Modeling Language (UML) model for VisualAge Generator (VG) business-oriented applications. This model was defined to bridge between two different models, the object-oriented UML design model and the VG programming model, which use a procedural high-level 4GL. We introduce a prototype tool named VG UML Modeler which is implemented as a Rational Rose Language Add-in for designing VG applications. This tool provides developers with the ability to create a UML model for VG applications, check its compatibility, and generate the appropriate VG 4GL entities. The paper describes a methodology of the design process for a sample application.