Glossaries Glossary - Sanitise to SE

Sanitise

The sanitisation option in the Export dialog ensures that the structure of the PDB (schema, items, cross references, and so on) will still appear in the export file but all of the useful data in the export file is either sanitised or removed (binary frames).

Scenario

A particular series of interactions among objects in a single execution of a system. A scenario is an instance of a use case.

Schedule

A schedule is a project plan in Microsoft Project

Security Code

A long string of apparently random characters that contains an encoded form of the numbers of connection and tool licences purchased by a Cradle customer. The security code is supplied by 3SL. It is recorded in the licence file when a customer enters the security code into a utility supplied with the Cradle system.

Semaphore File

When a binary frame is being viewed or edited, the contents of the binary frame are either placed into a new, temporary file, or the external file containing the binary frame which is accessed directly. In the same directory as this frame data file, a semaphore file is also created. The semaphore file has the same name as the binary frame data file, with the file type (extension) .sem.

Sequence Diagram - Non SysML

An Object Sequence Diagram (SQD) shows the details of the interaction of the environment (the external actors shown in the Use Case Diagram (UCD)) with the appropriate part(s) of the system (classes and their object instances), in terms of a time sequenced exchange of messages. The time sequencing is made graphically explicit by the SQD.

Sequence Diagram - SysML

Used to specify the behaviour of several interacting blocks in terms of a sequence of messages exchanged between those blocks. sds are also used to specify test cases.

Session

Sessions store information about your required WorkBench environment, e.g. current project, currently set navigation in primary WorkBench window, current window dimensions, currently opened queries and selected views and currently set navigation for each query pane.

Sibling

A sibling item is an item at the same level as a related item. So if the related item is numbered 1.1.1, the sibling item could be numbered 1.1.2. The numbering depends on how it is defined in Project Setup.

Sidebar

A bar on the side of the interface that contains icons of regularly used features providing the user a quick and easy method of displaying the data in the way he wants to see it.

Single Category

A single value picklist defined for categories in Project Setup.

Skill

As Cradle is a multi-discipline product, there may be information in the PDB that is intended to be used only by nominated users. Skills are the mechanism that is used to restrict this information to those users who are intended to see it.

Software Architecture

The structure of a piece of software typically expressed in diagrammatic notations based on calls of routines by other routines at three levels of granularity: sub-system, source file (or package or object), and within source file (or package body or class body).

Software Architecture Diagram

A Software Architecture Diagram (SAD) shows the processes (with communications and synchronisation), objects (with dependencies), and the interactions among processes and objects.

Source Code

Computer software in its original formats written by software engineers, prior to conversion into executable software by a compiler or similar tool.

Source Document

A document supplied by a customer to a potential supplier of a system that is analysed on a statement-by-statement basis by the supplier of the system to determine what is required of the delivered system by the customer. Such documents include Invitations to Tender.

Source Statement

A component part of a source document, the basis for the capture of a requirement.

Specification

Specifications are textual definitions of active (non-data) diagram symbols, such as processes on Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs), functions on Behaviour Diagrams (eFFBDs), components on Architecture Interconnect Diagrams (AIDs), equipments on Physical Architecture Diagrams (PADs), or use cases, actors, classes or states in OO models.

Spellchecker

Cradle provides a spell checker utility that can be run directly from WorkBench or it can be run standalone. You can run a query from the spell checker to select the information from the database you want to spell check. You can also select frames, attributes and categories you want to check. All frames are selected by default but no categories are selected by default.

Splitting

A part of the requirements engineering activity in which a complex requirement is divided into two or more simpler requirements, each of which is cross referenced to the original requirement. This technique is often used when the original requirement contains text from the customer source document that in turn contains multiple requirements, often expressed as multiple shall clauses in the sentences in the customer’s text. Splitting is often associated with actual subdivision of the requirement text into smaller and smaller components. 3SL advocates the use of source statements to store the customer’s text, and requirements to store the formalisation of the customer’s requirements statements. In this approach, requirements are atomic, are cross referenced to one or more source statements in one or more customer source documents, and the only use for the more traditional splitting is to split one high-level requirement into several more detailed requirements to achieve a testable requirement for analysis to work from.

State

A type of symbol in a State Transition Diagram (STD) that represents the function defined by the STD being in a particular mode. Such functions have a lifecycle which defines their behaviour through time. Each function moves through its lifecycle depending on the stimuli that it receives and the sequence of such stimuli. This lifecycle is divided into states. Such a function therefore moves between states in a manner determined by its stimuli.

State Model

A state model is a set of one or more Implementation Domain Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs) drawn from any level or levels in the Implementation Domain, that can be combined together.

State Transition Diagram

A diagram style (STD) used in a system analysis or design to depict part of the behavioural view of a system. The diagrams contain a representation of a finite-state-machine which expresses the change in state of either the functionality in the system (for the Yourdon methodology) or an object (stored data) for one class of current object oriented methodologies. Such diagrams depict time in terms of a sequence of states, the transitions between these states, the conditions for such transitions, and the actions that result. However, such system dynamics are not quantitative: the diagrams have nothing to say regarding the periods of time in, or between, states.

Statechart Diagram

A Statechart Diagram (SCD) depicts a finite-state-machine that describes how the class responds to different external stimuli.

State Machine Diagram - SysML

Used to specify the behaviour of a block in terms of its states and the transitions between states triggered by events and time. The stm integrates different threads of behaviour together to describe a blocks behaviour by assigning individual behaviour threads (i.e. activity diagrams) to a block's conditional states for execution.

Stereotype

A modelling language consists of entities (things, matter, energy, data), the properties of the entities, and relationships between entities/properties. In SysML the entities and properties are known as stereotypes.

Stimulus

A part of an event that defines the manner in which a part of the system’s environment is interacting with the system to which the system is to make a response. The stimulus is held in a frame called STIMULUS in the event.

Store

An element of many types of Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs) that depicts one or more items of stored data. The representation of the store may either be internal to the system or external to it. The definition of the item(s) in the store appears as an entry in the DD.

Structure Chart

A diagram style (STC) used in a system design to depict part of the software architecture of a system. Such diagrams depict the call hierarchy between the individual software routines and the nature of interfaces between routines, but say nothing about the algorithmic structure of the routines, nor the manner in which they interact through time.

Subject

An aspect of the real-world that is to be represented within a system when considered from all aspects including customer requirements, expected data, dynamics and behaviour, implementation technology, performance constraints, actual implementation, and all associated direct cross references; in all cases from the perspectives of all applicable engineering disciplines.

Subject Oriented

An adjective applied to any technique, or software product supporting a technique, or approach taken towards doing something based upon a technique, which focuses on the things (subjects) being manipulated and on the manipulations to be performed and the functionality to achieve it, in different measures at different points in the lifecycle. This approach is proposed by 3SL as the natural evolution of structured and object oriented approaches.

Submit

A user can submit for review any items that he or she can access read-write. If the users in a team have read-write access to each others’ items, then anyone in the team can submit each others’ items for review.

Sub-System

A logical unit for organising system models, each sub-system containing some of the model’s classes and associations. Sub-systems can be nested inside one another. The whole model can be considered as the top-level sub-system. A bottom-level sub-system is called a module; each class exposed within is owned by that home module.

Summary Metrics

Summary metrics perform simple calculations or comparisons on the data displayed in the corresponding cell, with optional sub-totals.

Superobject

A component of a final system consisting of all customer requirements, expected data, dynamics and behaviour, implementation technology, performance constraints, actual implementation and associated direct cross references. Superobjects are the elements of a Reuse Library that allow true reuse of intellectual effort to be achieved, not simply the limited reuse of software source code advocated by object oriented methodologies.

Suspect Integrity

An item is deemed suspect if it is the to end of a cross reference and the from end has been modified more recently. These can be highlighted if the interface option is set to ON.

Swimlane

Swimlanes are horizontal or vertical regions in a diagram, each with a background and foreground colour and a name. Swimlanes can be used to group related symbols together. They always appear at the back of the diagram, with the symbols in front of them, and any grid in front of these.

Switch User

This allows you to switch between users (i.e. log off and log back on) without having to enter a username, password and project code. For example, you would enter the same value in each User Profile you want to switch between. If you wanted to switch between User 1 and User 2, you would enter the same value in both these User Profiles.

System Architecture

The system’s sub-systems and equipments, and how they are to be connected together.

System Breakdown Structure

Architectural components are collated into a System Breakdown Structure (SBS) which links to the physical Product Breakdown Structure that can ultimately be linked to production and CAD/CAM systems.

System Definition Directory

A directory structure that contains numerous sub-directories for various types of site-wide setups and definitions, each sub-directory storing an arbitrarily large number of files holding the site’s personal definitions for the corresponding type of setup or definition data.

System Design

The phase in the project lifecycle in which the results of the analysis phase are combined with a set of implementation technologies and a proposed system architecture in an environment that encapsulates the environment used in the analysis and identifies more external terminators. In completing the system design, elements of the analysis are copied into the design hierarchy and extended with functionality to address the nature of the real environment, inter-processor and process communication, and internal system failures, errors, and reversionary modes.

System Environment

The set of real-world objects which constitute the environment for a system by being the set of external entities with which the system is to interact.

System Hierarchy

Project Manager displays the system hierarchy consisting of a single System node with the fixed name Cradle Systems and one System node for each Cradle system (i.e. each CDS) that it detects.

System Modelling

Models are abstractions of some part of the reality of a system. They are developed to assist analysis and design, to aid communication and understanding and as an improvement over linear sets of textual statements. In the context of Systems Engineering, we construct system models. Such models are abstractions of the final system that are developed from a particular perspective (such as a user or implementor) and at a particular level of detail.

System Note

A Cradle database mechanism that allows project-specific item types to be defined and then instantiated into an arbitrary number of items of each new type. Each type of system note has a project-specific internal structure in terms of category codes and frames, in the same way as the pre-defined item types.

Systems Engineering

An engineering discipline which considers the tools and techniques, theoretical and practical, for the creation of real-world systems from a variety of bespoke or standard components within the constraints of a project bounded by resources, timescales, and cost by potentially large teams of people working within several organisations.