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What Is Data Flow Diagram?: Why DFD?

Data flow diagrams (DFDs) graphically represent the flow of data through a system. A DFD describes the processes that transfer data from input to storage and reports. Logical DFDs describe data flow through a system to perform business functions, while physical DFDs describe implementation. DFDs are useful for communicating system design, determining requirements, and establishing automated and manual systems.

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128 views5 pages

What Is Data Flow Diagram?: Why DFD?

Data flow diagrams (DFDs) graphically represent the flow of data through a system. A DFD describes the processes that transfer data from input to storage and reports. Logical DFDs describe data flow through a system to perform business functions, while physical DFDs describe implementation. DFDs are useful for communicating system design, determining requirements, and establishing automated and manual systems.

Uploaded by

D S A DHAKA SPACE AGENCY
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is Data Flow Diagram?

Also known as DFD, Data flow diagrams are used to graphically represent
the flow of data in a business information system. DFD describes the
processes that are involved in a system to transfer data from the input to
the file storage and reports generation.

Data flow diagrams can be divided into logical and physical. The logical
data flow diagram describes flow of data through a system to perform
certain functionality of a business. The physical data flow diagram
describes the implementation of the logical data flow.

Why DFD?
DFD graphically representing the functions, or processes, which capture,
manipulate, store, and distribute data between a system and its
environment and between components of a system. The visual
representation makes it a good communication tool between User and
System designer. Structure of DFD allows starting from a broad overview
and expand it to a hierarchy of detailed diagrams. DFD has often been
used due to the following reasons:

Logical information flow of the system

Determination of physical system construction requirements

Simplicity of notation

Establishment of manual and automated systems requirements

DFD Diagram Notations

Now we'd like to briefly introduce to you a few diagram notations which
you'll see in the tutorial below.

External Entity
An external entity can represent a human, system or subsystem. It is where
certain data comes from or goes to. It is external to the system we study, in
terms of the business process. For this reason, people used to draw
external entities on the edge of a diagram.
Process
A process is a business activity or function where the manipulation and
transformation of data take place. A process can be decomposed to a finer
level of details, for representing how data is being processed within
theprocess.

Data Store
A data store represents the storage of persistent data required and/or
produced by the process. Here are some examples of data stores:
membership forms, database tables, etc.

Data Flow
A data flow represents the flow of information, with its direction represented
by an arrowhead that shows at the end(s) of flow connector.

Use Case Diagram


As the most known diagram type of the behavioral UML types, Use case
diagrams give a graphic overview of the actors involved in a system,
different functions needed by those actors and how these different
functions interact.

It’s a great starting point for any project discussion because you can easily
identify the main actors involved and the main processes of the system.

Activity Diagram
Activity diagrams represent workflows in a graphical way. They can be
used to describe the business workflow or the operational workflow of any
component in a system. Sometimes activity diagrams are used as an
alternative to State machine diagrams.
Class Diagram
Class diagrams are the main building block of any object-oriented solution.
It shows the classes in a system, attributes, and operations of each class
and the relationship between each class.
In most modeling tools, a class has three parts. Name at the top, attributes
in the middle and operations or methods at the bottom. In a large
system with many related classes, classes are grouped together to create
class diagrams. Different relationships between classes are shown by
different types of arrows.
.
Sequence Diagram
Sequence diagrams in UML show how objects interact with each other and
the order those interactions occur. It’s important to note that they show the
interactions for a particular scenario. The processes are represented
vertically and interactions are shown as arrows.

Sequence diagram drawn using Creately

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