The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a modeling language standardized by the Object Management Group (OMG) used to manage requirements in software development projects. IDEF, the acronym for Integration DEFinition, refers to a family of modeling languages in the field of systems and software engineering.
In this article, Ovidiu Noranto provides a short primer for the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the Integration DEFinition (IDEF) family of languages where he identifies the potential similarities and connections between IDEF and the UML. He also investigates the suitability of the UML (and it extensions) for business modelling. To achieve this goal, he tries to model a business process using both IDEF and UML and document the issues discovered during this activity.
His conclusion is that both the UML and IDEF approaches could be used to model almost any useful view of a business, but that the UML can only be effectively used when complemented by design patterns that allow design knowledge propagation and specific extensions that allow to effectively capture the business processes.
Read the complete article on http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/noran/Docs/UMLvsIDEF.pdf
