Glossaries Glossary - Flow to Frame

Flow

A class of types of symbol drawn on Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs) that convey information and/or control signals between functions within a system. Flows are either discrete (convey packets of information) or continuous, and are either data or control (only carry signals).

Focusing

A part of the requirements engineering activity in which distinct requirements related by a common topic are associated with each other. In one approach, a new requirement is derived which contains a suitable combination of the wording of the requirements being focused. In the alternative approach, advocated by 3SL, a symbol in a diagram within a graphical analysis model is the entity to which the related requirements are linked. This approach offers savings in time, clarity, contextual information, and minimised distortion of the requirement set from the customer source statements, and minimises the number of cross references to be created and maintained.

Form

A region of the WorkBench UI containing a layout of specific components of an item that has a specific initial width and height that can be scrolled over the layout, in the event that the layout is too large to be shown completely within the current size of the WorkBench UI.

Formal Document

A formal document is simply an alternative means of using a document structure to generate a document. The principal effect is that a formal document has special significance to the project. Identified by its name, issue, reference, and similar details, a particular formal document can only be generated once. This document generation effectively produces a master which is preserved in the PDB and from which copies can be obtained, for example to be printed, at any time thereafter.

Forward Engineering

The activity of producing the deliverables from a phase of a project from the results of a previous phase. That is, the opposite of reverse engineering which seeks to run a part of the normal system development process backwards.

Frame

A component part of an item of information in a Cradle project database. Frames contain text, parameters, or the data of a third party tool (for example, CAD, CAE, or CIM data, spreadsheets, or circuit board schematics). The latter is the basis for the most flexible of Cradle’s four data and control integration mechanisms whereby an item of information can have frames within itself, whose data is created and maintained by third party tools whilst the item, and therefore all of its component frames, are managed within the Cradle CMS. Frames holding such third party tool data either store the data, or store where the data resides, or store a mechanism that brings the data into existence in a defined place.

Frame Type

Different types of frame are created as part of the project setup and are termed frame types. Cradle uses frame types as a method to allow all project data to be manipulated, integrated, and controlled in a single project database wherever and however it was created. The underlying type of data in a frame is either text, binary, or EPS. In general, binary frames are used for anything that is not text. This underlying type of data in a frame is called the base type.

From Part

One of the references that, with the to-part, constitute a cross reference. It defines one of the items that the cross references makes dependent on another item. It is often termed the source of the cross reference.