The Perspectives Graphical Language is illustrated in the paragraphs below. Details of the language are presented in Perspectives Design Patterns I and II. Make sure to read the specification of the Perspectives Language first that is listed here.
Modeling starts with creating a new Context. Automatically the corresponding Context Diagram is created to be able to model the newly created Context’s contents. Here a Context is shown that contains a Userrole, a Thingrole and the Perspective the Userrole has on the Thingrole
Next consider the toolbox with the five symbols that are used to draw a Context Diagram. A Thingrole becomes a Userrole as soon as the Role has a Perspective. Note that there are only three relation symbols. IN that can be applied for Roles as well as Contexts as in “Worker IN Commerce Worker”, ON which denotes a Perspective, as in “Worker has a Perspective ON the Meeting” and BE by which can be indicated that a Userrole can make itself another Userrole, as in “Worker” can become a Commerce Worker”.
Here some examples of the IN, the ON and the BE relations are shown: Subcontext in Context, Role in Role, Userrole can become another Userrole:
As soon as a Role is created, automatically a Role Diagram is created to be able to add Properties to the Role. The toolbox for the Role Diagram lists the five types of Properties, the View that can be used to limit the Properties that can be seen by a particular Perspective, the “Widget” that can add Charts and Maps etc. to to a Property and again the IN relation.
In the next example the IN relation is used to add Properties to a Role:
Here is example of adding a View to a Role. The View “Only Name” will contain only the first and last name of Worker and can therefore limit a Perspective to only include these two properties:
And then there are Widgets. Widgets are UI controls such as Images, Maps, Charts, Browser windows and Calendars. Widgets can be used to improve the User Experience of the prototypes that are generated from Models. Here is example of a Image Widget:
As shown here the “IN” relation is used also to connect a Property of a Role to a Property that belongs to a Widget. The result of this is shown here:
This is a part of a Prototype that is generated from the Model by the Perspectives Tool. Here this Perspectives Tool is discussed.