Modelling language for a process / transaction

I am writing my Bsc. thesis about a transaction which involves several software systems. Its basically about the communication and information exchange of a ERP system and a webservice which I am implementing. There is a module on the ERP side and the web service on the other. The transaction is communication with XML files.

I want to model this process or transaction and don't know the right modelling language for that purpose. Is the UML component model the right one?

I also want to annote side information like the programming language I am using at a certain step in the process or which XML standard is beeing used. It would also be nice to annotate the asynchronous HTTP sending and receiving in the process.

Thanks for开发者_运维百科 your help!

Marco

If your primary goal is to document the interactions among web service and ERP module then the most appropriate UML diagram is likely either a sequence diagram or activity diagram.

Both will help to show the protocol (sequence of interactions). Both can be annotated with anything you like using notes or constraints.

If you're trying to capture more specifics on the representation of messages UML may not be appropriate. Its strength is showing the structure of the interaction, less so structure of the messages themselves. If you want to show that detail it may be more appropriate to look at some of the web service standards, e.g. WS-choreography.

hth.