Question

May i know how to draw a Block Diagram for a system/ software development? I searched online and i couldn’t find any guidelines or good example.

What should be on the top in Block Diagram?

Should i arrange the Block Diagram based on my Class Diagram (Inheritance, interface, abstract etc)?

Why use Block Diagram?

What does Block Diagram actually show? The process? The component? The overall architecture?

Can anyone please provide me any links regarding Block Diagram if there is any?

Answer 1

A block diagram is helpful mainly in the preliminary stages of software development.

A block diagram is similar to a UML package diagram in that it only shows very high level components of the design and how they interact.

What should be on the top? There isn’t really a "top" in a block diagram. You may be confusing this with a layered architecture diagram. In a layered architecture diagram, top-level layers are generally the closest to the user.

Should I arrange the block diagram in terms of Inheritance? Not really, the block diagram is supposed to show only the high level interactions of the system. A UML class diagram is where you show the inheritance and interface behaviour.

Why use a block diagram? Primarily because it is easy to partition the system into components for component-based software engineering and because it makes it easy to discuss with clients/managers.

The block diagram generally shows the overall architecture.

This is an example of a layered architecture diagram:
(from http://www.acaltechnology.com/index.php?page=news&id=1577)

This is an example of a block diagram:
(from https://web.archive.org/web/20121106145142/http://www.simventions.com/whitepapers/uml/3000_borcon_uml.html)