Modeling languages provide a way to express a system, a project or some information using a structure that follows a consistent set of rules for easier understanding. The rules are necessary in order to be able to interpret the language. Modeling languages have been around since the start of the 20th century and are essential to software development.
Many people think of Unified Modeling Language (UML) when they think of modeling languages, but there’s so much more to it than just that. UML was created when several object-oriented modeling languages merged, this means there were quite a few languages before UML. And even to this date, there are some modeling languages that exist independent from UML. The most popular modeling language that isn’t UML is Entity Relationship (ER) and Enhanced Entity Relationship (EER), which are often used when working with databases. The history of modeling languages can be clearly seen thanks to a keynote at Code Generation 2014 by Juha-Pekka Tolvanen.
In this post, I will cover a few modeling languages (not including UML since that will be covered in a later post). First, I will talk about a language that is specifically used in the aerospace industry, Drakon. Its goal is to make procedures easier to understand. Although Drakon was created for the aerospace industry, it has started to see some use outside of it. Drakon has some strict rules such as: only straight lines allowed, no arrows and time in the diagram flows downwards. With these rules, diagrams can become significantly more readable. There’s an IDE to create Drakon flowcharts.
Another modeling language is Integrated Definition (IDEF). It is a graphical process modeling methodology used to express systems. It was developed by the United States Air Force in the 1970s. There are 16 different variations of IDEF, each variation used for different things. Among the many benefits of using IDEF there are: it is usable in every context and industry, easy-to-follow diagrams, gives you a clear overview of the processes, etc. There’s a tool to help you create IDEF diagrams.
Thanks to modeling languages it’s easy for you to express your system and for others to interpret it, this is all thanks to its many rules.
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