130 Information Technology and Organizations Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ABSTRACT Applications development for distance teaching has become into a potentiality for the managerial market, specially for the training area. The absence of methodologies and specification languages for these applications can commit the production and development software processes for distance teaching (DT). There are several models used for the specification of applications at the most varied domains of the knowledge. Unified Modeling Language (UML) is characterized as a language (drawing) for systems specification, using OO concepts. Relationship Management Methodology (RMM) is defined as a methodology for hypermedia applications development, with its specification language (LRMM). Scientific community knows that DT applications constitute a knowledge domain, highly complex. Thus, this paper has the objective to present the capacity of LRMM and UML, and to verify their applicability for DT software development. 1. INTRODUCTION On its fundamental expression sense, Distance Teaching is some- thing very old, is the teaching that occurs when teacher and students are separated in the time or in the space. According to [Chaves 1999], so that DT can exist it is necessary some technology intervention. The Computer is constituted in the main technological interven- tion at DT context. With the computer is possible to access, by Internet, remote information, facilitating the communication between students and the teacher. With this scenery, this work has the objective to verify the poten- tialities of the specification language LRMM [Isakowitz 1995] and of UML [Booch 1999] in the development of DT applications. This paper is divided in sections. At section 2 will be presented important concepts about LRMM. The section 3 presents the UML and LRMM concepts in the development of DT applications. The conclu- sions and the future works will be discussed in the section 4. 2 – SPECIFICATION LANGUAGE RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGY (LRMM) RMM methodology is recommended for the construction of hypermedia project. The project cycle and implementation of an hypermedia application specified by the RMM methodology is divided into seven phases: 1 Viability Analysis; 2 Necessity Analysis; 3 Equip- ment Selection; 4 Specification Project; 5 Interface Project; 5a Proto- col Conversion Project; 5b Behavior in time of Execution Interface; 6 Construction; 7 Test. This paper will present the specification phase (4) using the LRMM [Isakowitz 1995]. LRMM presents a set of symbols for multimedia and hypermedia applications specification. Figure 1 presents this set of symbols. Symbols Definition: • Entity: represents a collection of objects of the real world, which individual members (examples or instances) have the following char- acteristics: each object can be identified by an only way. For example, if exists in an application, an object type called student, the develop- ment and the user should be capable to distinguish one student from another. Each entity can be described by one or more data elements (attributes (example: name, address)) [Yourdon 1989]. • Slice: represents the attributes grouping of a same entity that has correlation or that can interest the user, forming a visualization unit (a visualization unit is the exhibition of information in the computer display). • Relationship: represents a connection set among entities. For ex- ample, any application has the entities teacher and disciplines, these Unified Modeling Language and Relationship Management Methodology in the Development of Applications for Distance Teaching José Augusto Fabri, Mauro de Mesquita Spínola, and Marcelo Schneck de Paula Pessoa Foundation Educational of City Assis University of São Paulo - Polytechnic School Production Engineering Department Assis – SP – Brazil 55-18-3321-2687 55-11-3818-5363 55-11-3818-5363 fabri@femanet.com. brmauro.spinola@poli.usp.br mpessoa@usp.br Figure 1 –LRMM Symbols. 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200, Hershey PA 17033, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com 162"%# IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING