Hewlett-Packard Fusion

Visual Thought now supports the HP Fusion notation, in use in over fourteen divisions in Hewlett-Packard and elsewhere.

Graphical examples of the various Fusion diagrams that Visual Thought supports are provided below. Confluent thanks the Hewlett-Packard Software Initiative (SWI), which developed these examples and palettes, for their generous contribution.

Examples

• Object Model
• Object Interaction Graph
• Use Case Scenario
• Visibility Graph

  Palettes

• Fusion Palettes "Home Page"
• Object Model Palette
• Object Interaction Palette
• Use Case Palette
• Visibility Graph Palette

The Benefits of Visual Thought

• VT gives you a way to create high-quality Fusion diagrams very easily. If you are currently creating Fusion diagrams with almost anything else (e.g., CASE tool, FrameMaker, or less), you will understand what we mean when you try Visual Thought.

• VT is quite inexpensive, especially compared to a typical CASE tool. It is often possible to outfit an entire development group with Visual Thought for the price of one CASE tool license. Visual Thought's low cost doesn't necessarily come at the expense of features, either. We often hear of organizations buying CASE tools, but then using only 30% of the features -- that 30% being the diagramming portion. Visual Thought is optimized for diagramming.

• VT supports other methodologies. Visual Thought allows you to combine elements of Fusion with other methodologies or even use other methodologies without Fusion. Because of VT's generality, you can also leverage your usage of Visual Thought across other applications, such as technical documentation, network diagramming, or flowcharting.

• Because VT is optimized for diagramming, is inexpensive, and supports other methodologies, it provides you with a gentle, low-cost, low-risk access to the benefits of HP Fusion.

About Fusion

As posed by Derek Coleman's 1994 book, Fusion covers aspects of object-oriented analysis (OOA), object-oriented design (OOD), and implementation. Fusion provides multiple benefits for software development, specifying a well-defined set of development phases, plus techniques for identifying, defining, and ensuring consistency between the deliverables of each phase.

Fusion (1994) appears largely intended for traditional single-process, sequential software development, but extensions have been developed or are being developed to adapt Fusion for real-time, distributed computing, and concurrency. Fusion is also being continually enhanced and evolved by Dr. Reed Letsinger, Derek Coleman, and others at HP Labs. For more information on these and other developments in Fusion, please consult the bibliography below, or jump to HP Labs' Web site.

For more information about HP's internal consulting arm, the HP Software Initiative (SWI), please send email to swi@hpcea.ce.hp.com.

For more information about HP's external Fusion consulting services, the HP Professional Services Organization (PSO) Object-Oriented Solutions Center, please contact Confluent (info@confluent.com) for an e-mail address.

Bibliography

• Object-Oriented Development: The Fusion Method. D. Coleman, et al. Prentice Hall, 1994. ISBN 0-13-338823-9.
• Object-Oriented Development At Work: The Fusion Method in the Real World. R. Letsinger, et al. Prentice Hall. Available 11/95.
• Object-Oriented Technology for Real-Time Systems. M. Awad, et al. Prentice Hall. Available 11/95.

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