Defining specialization for dataflow diagrams

摘要

Specialization has been used in object-oriented technologies to provide a number of powerful benefits such as modularity, maintainability, and comprehensibility. For the most part, however, system behavior continues to be modeled using traditional tools such as state diagrams and dataflow diagrams, which remain outside the scope of the specialization hierarchy used to such advantage with objects. This paper presents a framework for extending the notion of specialization to these process representations by identifying a set of transformations which, when applied to a process description, always result in specialization. We then use this framework to define specialization for dataflow diagrams. We illustrate with specific examples that such a use of specialization is not only theoretically possible, but shows promise as a method for categorizing and analyzing processes.