Proceeding

UML Diagrams in Software Engineering Research:

A Systematic Literature Review †
Hatice Koç *, Ali Mert Erdoğan, Yousef Barjakly and Serhat Peker

Department of Management Information Systems, Izmir Bakircay University, 35665 Menemen, Turkey;
[email protected] (A.M.E.); [email protected] (Y.B.); [email protected] (S.P.)
* Correspondence: [email protected]
† Presented at the 7th International Management Information Systems Conference, Online,
9–11 December 2020.

Abstract: Software engineering is a discipline utilizing Unified Modelling Language (UML) dia-
grams, which are accepted as a standard to depict object-oriented design models. UML diagrams
make it easier to identify the requirements and scopes of systems and applications by providing
visual models. In this manner, this study aims to systematically review the literature on UML dia-
gram utilization in software engineering research. A comprehensive review was conducted over the
last two decades, spanning from 2000 to 2019. Among several papers, 128 were selected and exam-
ined. The main findings showed that UML diagrams were mostly used for the purpose of design
and modeling, and class diagrams were the most commonly used ones.

Keywords: software engineering; UML diagrams; literature review; systematic mapping; classifica-
tion

1. Introduction
Software enables organizations to adopt competitive differentiation and competitive
Citation: Koç, H.; Erdoğan, A.M.;
change because they can design, enhance, and adapt their systems, products, and services
Barjakly, Y.; Peker, S. UML to different market sectors, from manufacturing to art, and provide rapid and flexible
Diagrams in Software Engineering supply chain management [1]. However, every aspect of a system or application is deter-
Research: A Systematic Literature mined to develop software. Therefore, software development is complex [2], and software
Review. Proceedings 2021, 74, 13. engineering has emerged as an engineering discipline which deals with any software
https://doi.org/10.3390/proceed- product from the early stages of system specification to the maintenance of this system or
ings2021074013 application. It helps develop more reliable systems and decreases the cost for developing
the system [3].
Published: 10 March 2021 Systematic literature review (SLR) is a research methodology, which makes it easier
to recognize, analyze, and interpret all existing studies [4]. Its objective is not only finding
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neu-
all evidence for research questions but also contributing to improve evidence-based
tral with regard to jurisdictional
guidelines [5]. It consists of three processes, which are planning, execution, and reporting.
claims in published maps and institu-
Although these processes can consist of many steps depending on the research target, it
tional affiliations.
must include the steps of data retrieval, study selection, data extraction, and data synthe-
sis [6].
The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is also used to develop a system in software
Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Li- engineering, which is a visual language to define and document a system. The require-
censee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. ments in scenarios that express how users use a system are shown with the UML. The
This article is an open access article constraints of a system are also shown with the UML [4]. Hence, many researchers who
distributed under the terms and con- work as software engineers publish papers about how UML diagrams are utilized to de-
ditions of the Creative Commons At- velop a system and contribute to the practice in order to advance the software engineering
tribution (CC BY) license (http://crea- discipline. In our study, SLR is used to understand which UML diagrams are popular,
tivecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
why they are used, and which application areas are the most popular [2].

Proceedings 2021, 74, 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2021074013 www.mdpi.com/journal/proceedings

Proceedings 2021, 74, 13 2 of 8

The aim of this paper is to determine the situation and the future of UML diagrams
in the software engineering discipline. Thus, the research questions and keywords were
identified, and then publications between 2000 and 2019 were investigated using Google
Scholar. A total of 247 publications were found, and 128 of them included the following
UML diagrams: a class diagram, activity diagram, sequence/interaction diagram, state
machine diagram, system sequence diagram, deployment diagram, collaboration/com-
munication diagram, package diagram, object diagram, domain model diagram, and a
component diagram. These publications were classified in terms of the distribution years,
the publishers, the application areas, the usage purpose, and the types of UML diagrams.
A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet was used to store and analyze these data with bar graphs
and pie charts.
The rest of the paper is composed of three sections: Method, Results, and Conclusion.
In the Method section, the SLR process is investigated in detail, giving an outline for how
the methodology is applied and how the data is collected, which consists of four sub-
sections: Research Questions, Search Strategy, Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria, and Data
Extraction. The Results section expresses the findings for the included papers, which is
composed of five subsections, those being the answers to the research questions. The last
section includes discussion and comments on the findings, the situation, and the future of
this study.

2. Method
This study was conducted with the SLR methodology in three phases, consisting of
planning, exploring, and reporting, based on Kitchenham’s theoretical framework. In this
framework, each of the phases can be broken down into many steps [6]. The planning
phase consists of the following steps: research questions, search strategy, inclusion and
exclusion criteria, and data extraction.

2.1. Research Questions

The objective of this paper is to investigate the use of various types of UML diagrams
against various variables. Several research questions were discussed, based on the previ-
ous literature and on common sense. The following are the basic research questions:
RQ1. What is the distribution of the number of publications by year?
RQ2. What is the distribution of the number of publications by publishers and publishing
types?
RQ3. What is the distribution of the publications according to the application areas?
RQ4. For which purposes are UML diagrams utilized in the publications?
RQ5. What are the most commonly used UML diagrams in the publications?

2.2. Search Strategy

This systematic literature review was performed through only the Google Scholar
search engine, using a set of predefined keywords (shown in Table 1). The base keyword
for the search strings was UML. This keyword was combined with the search strings listed
in Table 1. The years between 2000 and 2019 were determined to be the target period, and
relevant articles were downloaded that met the general criterion, which included at least
one of the UML diagrams given in Table 2.

Table 1. Search strings.

Search Strings
System implementation Model for system
Software implementation Model for software
Application implementation Model for application
System design Architecture for system
Proceedings 2021, 74, 13 3 of 8

Software design Architecture for software

Application design Architecture for application
Framework for system System architecture
Framework for software System model
Framework for application System framework

Moreover, the process of forward and backward snowballing was undertaken to ex-
tend the research into two stages: using the original papers and then using the additional
papers that were found [7]. To do this, for each paper, the members of the team checked
the references in the paper, looking at the titles as well as the abstracts.

Table 2. Types of Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams.

Types of UML Diagrams

Use Case Diagram Communication/Collaboration Diagram
System Sequence Diagram Class Diagram
Domain Model (diagram) Component Diagram
Activity Diagram Deployment Diagram
State Machine Diagram Object Diagram
Sequence/Interaction Diagram Package Diagram

2.3. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

After a general research strategy and criteria, several relevant keywords were iden-
tified in terms of the research questions, the research was organized, and 247 publications
were found in the databases. A set of detailed criteria was created in order to select the
publications related to the research purpose. The inclusion and exclusion criteria were the
following:
• The publications must be published in the English language;
• The publications must be published between 2000 and 2019;
• The publications must include at the least one UML diagram.
Figure 1 displays the SLR process and the results of the inclusion and exclusion cri-
teria, and 52% of the downloaded publications—that is 128 publications—were included
in the study out of a total number of 247 papers.

Figure 1. Systematic literature review diagram.

2.4. Data Extraction

A data extraction process was conducted in order to deal with the research questions
and discover patterns and trends. For this purpose, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet was
used to store and organize the data about the publications, which were the certain classi-
fication characteristics regarding the research questions such as type, publisher, usage
Proceedings 2021, 74, 13 4 of 8

purpose, and application area. Table 3 shows each classification characteristic and their
categories used in this study.

Table 3. The classification characteristics for the publications.

Characteristics Categories
Publication Type Journals, conferences, book chapters, and other academic publications
Publishers IEEE, ACM, Elsevier, Springer, and others
Goals Design, testing, implementation, and others
Application Health, industry and business, finance, service, computer science, education, and others

3. Results
This section explains the results of our literature review analyses on the publications
and includes the findings related to the research questions. It is organized as subsections
in terms of the research questions.

3.1. RQ1. What Is the Distribution of the Number of Publications by Year?

Figure 2 shows the distribution of the publications between 2000 and 2019 through
four-year subperiods. The peak subperiod was between 2012 and 2015 at 25%, whereas
the subperiod between 2000 and 2004 was 23%, the subperiod between 2004 and 2007 was
20%, and the subperiod between 2016 and 2019 was 17%.

40

32
29
30
25
22
19
20

10

0
2000–2003 2004–2007 2008–2011 2012–2015 2016–2019
Year Periods

Number of Studies

Figure 2. Distribution of papers based on four-year subperiods.

3.2. RQ2. What Is the Distribution of the Number of Publications by Publishers and Publishing
Types?
Figure 3 illustrates the distribution of the types of publications. It expresses that the
number of conference proceedings was 60, which was 47% of all publications, while the
book chapter publications had the lowest number and percentage of 4%, the number of
journal papers had a rate of 44%, and the percentage of other publications was 5%.
Figure 4 shows the number of publications in terms of the publishers. A total of 44
publications were published by IEEE, while Elsevier and Springer had the same number
of publications at 17. Moreover, 9 publications were published in ACM. Other publishers,
such as Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and others, had 41 publications.
Proceedings 2021, 74, 13 5 of 8

Figure 3. The number of articles by publication type.

50
44
41
40

30

20 17 17

9
10

0
IEEE ACM Elseiver Springer Others
Publishers

Number of Studies

Figure 4. Distribution of articles by publisher.

3.3. RQ3. What Is the Distribution of the Publications According to the Application Areas?
Figure 5 expresses the distribution of publications for each application. The greatest
number of publications was mainly published for computer science and industry and
business applications, respectively, whereas the least number of articles was published
for finance and other application areas.

Figure 5. Distribution of publications by application area.

Proceedings 2021, 74, 13 6 of 8

3.4. RQ4. For Which Purposes Are UML Diagrams Utilized in the Publications?
More than two-thirds of the publications used UML diagrams for design purposes.
Other purposes for utilizing UML diagrams included testing and implementation or de-
velopment, with percentages of 18% and 13.3%, respectively. These can be seen in Figure
6 in detail.

Figure 6. Distribution of articles by purpose of UML diagram usage.

3.5. RQ5. What Are the Most Commonly Used UML Diagrams in the Publications?
The distribution for the number of each type of UML diagram is expressed in Figure
7. The least-used UML diagram was the component diagram, which had a rate of 0.7%.
However, the class diagram was the most commonly used one and was in 26.3% of all the
articles.

80
71
70
60
50 44 41
40 34 33
30
20 12
10 9 7 6 6 5 2
0

Figure 7. UML diagram usage in publications.

Table 4 gives information about the distribution of publications that either had only
one UML diagram type or more than one diagram type, and half of the studies contained
only one distinct diagram type; 18.8% of the publications included two or three different
types of diagrams, and 13.2% of the publications included four different types of UML
Proceedings 2021, 74, 13 7 of 8

diagrams. Only one publication contained five different types of UML diagrams, and 3%
of all the publications contained six different types of UML diagrams.

Table 4. Distribution of publications by UML diagram type usage.

The Number of UML Diagram Type Usages Count Percentage

1 59 46.1%
2 24 18.8%
3 24 18.8%
4 17 13.2%
5 4 3.1%
Total 128 100%

Apart from this table, when the diagrams under the category of Others were exam-
ined one by one, it was seen that single usages of the collaboration, component, and object
diagrams totaled zero; that is, they were never used individually in any publication.
Table 5 was formed to see the associations of the diagrams that were used in the same
publication. In other words, one can find the counts of publications that included two
specific diagrams in a study by looking at the junction square of the diagram names in the
table. Additionally, the bold numbers in the middle of the table give the total counts of
publications that included the related diagrams.

Table 5. The association matrix for the usage of UML diagram types.

Class Activity Use Case Sequence/Interaction State Machine Others

Class 71 22 23 19 19 27
Activity 22 44 16 9 8 16
Use Case 23 16 41 13 13 25
Sequence/Interaction 19 9 13 34 12 9
State Machine 19 8 13 12 33 13
Others 27 16 25 9 13 47

The five diagrams that had high usage rates in Figure 7 took place directly by their
names in the table. The other six diagrams were taken under the category of Others. Ac-
cordingly, it is obvious that high associations were correlated with the usage rates of the
diagrams. When comparing the differences between the associations together with the
total number of the publications, there were no significant differences, but when a class
diagram had 27 associations with the other diagrams in 71 total publications, the use case
for the other diagrams had 25 associations with 41 total publications, which was signifi-
cantly lower than the class diagrams. The activity diagrams also had less association with
the state machine diagrams compared with all the other diagrams.

4. Conclusions
The aim of this study was to present a comprehensive systematic literature review to
detect research trends on the use of UML diagrams within the past twenty years. For this
purpose, research questions were identified, and then a specific search strategy was fol-
lowed. All related studies published for a twenty-year period were systematically re-
viewed. A total of 128 publications were included and investigated in terms of the re-
search questions. Furthermore, the following main findings were discovered:
• The most common usage of UML diagrams in publications was class diagrams, while
sequence and state machine diagrams had the low rate of usage;
• Most of the publications were either conference proceedings or journals, whereas
there were only a few publications which were book chapters or other publication
Proceedings 2021, 74, 13 8 of 8

types. Furthermore, the largest number of articles using UML diagrams was pub-
lished by IEEE;
• Most of the articles were published for the computer science and industry application
fields, respectively;
• The articles utilized UML diagrams mostly for the purposes of designing and mod-
eling.
This research reviewed articles published between 2000 and June 2019 by searching
for a set of certain keywords. In further studies, it might be valuable to use a wider set of
keywords and extend the time span in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of
the literature related to this topic.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, Y.B.; methodology, H.K.; analysis, A.M.E.; original draft
preparation, H.K., Y.B., A.M.E.; writing—review and editing, S.P.; supervision, S.P. All authors have
read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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