Unified Modeling Language: theoretical and practical complexity

Systems development efforts are gradually moving to encompass object-oriented (OO) analysis and design methodologies. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) was adopted by the Object Management Group as the standard visual modeling language for OO systems development. However, UML has been criticized in the literature for its complexity, inconsistent semantics, and ambiguous constructs. A set of complexity indices for UML in aggregate, and the nine diagramming techniques individually, was compiled recently. Since this set of metrics is based on inclusion of all possible constructs in UML, it thus provides an indication of the theoretical (maximum) complexity of the modeling methods. This research aims to differentiate (for UML) the theoretical complexity from a more practical complexity, and also to define and develop measures for practical complexity, by examining three distinct software system types