Object-Oriented Software Engineering

Practical Software Development using UML and Java

Chapter 5:
Modelling with Classes
5.1 What is UML?

•The Unified Modelling Language is a standard graphical language for

modelling object oriented software
• At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of 1990s, the first object-
oriented development processes appeared
• The proliferation of methods and notations tended to cause
considerable confusion
• Two important methodologists Rumbaugh and Booch decided to
merge their approaches in 1994.
• They worked together at the Rational Software Corporation
• In 1995, another methodologist, Jacobson, joined the team
• His work focused on use cases
• In 1997 the Object Management Group (OMG) started the process of
UML standardization

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UML diagrams

• Class diagrams
• describe classes and their relationships
• Interaction diagrams
• show the behaviour of systems in terms of how objects interact with each other
• State diagrams and activity diagrams
• show how systems behave internally
• Component and deployment diagrams
• show how the various components of systems are arranged logically and physically

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UML features

• It has detailed semantics

• It has extension mechanisms
• It has an associated textual language
• Object Constraint Language (OCL)

•The objective of UML is to assist in software development

• It is not a methodology

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What constitutes a good model?

•A model should
• use a standard notation
• be understandable by clients and users
• lead software engineers to have insights about the system
• provide abstraction

•Models are used:

• to help create designs
• to permit analysis and review of those designs.
• as the core documentation describing the system.

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5.2 Essentials of UML Class Diagrams

•The main symbols shown on class diagrams are:

• Classes
• represent the types of data themselves
• Associations
• represent linkages between instances of classes
• Attributes
• are simple data found in classes and their instances
• Operations
• represent the functions performed by the classes and their instances
• Generalizations
• group classes into inheritance hierarchies

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Classes
•A class is simply represented as a box with the name of the class
inside
• The diagram may also show the attributes and operations
• The complete signature of an operation is:
operationName(parameterName: parameterType …): returnType

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5.3 Associations and Multiplicity
•An association is used to show how two classes are related to each
other
• Symbols indicating multiplicity are shown at each end of the
association

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Labelling associations
• Each association can be labelled, to make explicit the nature of
the association

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Analyzing and validating associations

• Many-to-one
• A company has many employees,
• An employee can only work for one company.
• This company will not store data about the moonlighting activities of employees!
• A company can have zero employees
• E.g. a ‘shell’ company
• It is not possible to be an employee unless you work for a company

worksFor 1
Employee * Company

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Analyzing and validating associations

• Many-to-many
• An assistant can work for many managers
• A manager can have many assistants
• Assistants can work in pools
• Managers can have a group of assistants
• Some managers might have zero assistants.
• Is it possible for an assistant to have, perhaps temporarily, zero managers?

Assistant * 1..** Manager

supervisor

Open in Umple

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Analyzing and validating associations

• One-to-one
• For each company, there is exactly one board of directors
• A board is the board of only one company
• A company must always have a board
• A board must always be of some company

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Company 1 BoardOfDirectors

Open in Umple

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Analyzing and validating associations
•Avoid unnecessary one-to-one associations

• Avoid this do this

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A more complex example
• A booking is always for exactly one passenger
• no booking with zero passengers
• a booking could never involve more than one passenger.
• A Passenger can have any number of Bookings
• a passenger could have no bookings at all
• a passenger could have more than one booking

• The frame around this diagram is an optional feature that any

UML 2.0 may possess.

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Association classes
• Sometimes, an attribute that concerns two associated classes
cannot be placed in either of the classes
• The following are equivalent

Open in Umple and extended example

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Reflexive associations
• It is possible for an association to connect a class to itself

Open in Umple

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Directionality in associations
• Associations are by default bi-directional
• It is possible to limit the direction of an association by adding an
arrow at one end

Open in Umple

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5.4 Generalization
•Specializing a superclass into two or more subclasses
• A generalization set is a labeled group of generalizations with a
common superclass
• The label (sometimes called the discriminator) describes the
criteria used in the specialization

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Avoiding unnecessary generalizations

Inappropriate hierarchy of
classes, which should be
instances

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Avoiding unnecessary generalizations (cont)
Open in Umple

Improved class diagram, with its corresponding instance

diagram
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Handling multiple discriminators
• Creating higher-level generalization

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Handling multiple discriminators
• Using multiple inheritance

• Using the Player-Role pattern (in Chapter 6)

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Avoiding having instances change class
• An instance should never need to change class

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5.5 Object Diagrams
• A link is an instance of an association
• In the same way that we say an object is an instance of a class

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Associations versus generalizations in object
diagrams
• Associations describe the relationships that will exist between instances at
run time.
• When you show an instance diagram generated from a class diagram, there will be an
instance of both classes joined by an association

• Generalizations describe relationships between classes in class diagrams.

• They do not appear in instance diagrams at all.
• An instance of any class should also be considered to be an instance of each of that
class’s superclasses

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5.6 More Advanced Features: Aggregation
• Aggregations are special associations that represent ‘part-whole’
relationships.
• The ‘whole’ side is often called the assembly or the
aggregate
• This symbol is a shorthand notation association named
isPartOf

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When to use an aggregation
•As a general rule, you can mark an association as an aggregation if the
following are true:
• You can state that
• the parts ‘are part of’ the aggregate
• or the aggregate ‘is composed of’ the parts
• When something owns or controls the aggregate, then they also own or
control the parts

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Composition
• A composition is a strong kind of aggregation
• if the aggregate is destroyed, then the parts are destroyed as
well

• Two alternatives for addresses

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Aggregation hierarchy

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Propagation
• A mechanism where an operation in an aggregate is
implemented by having the aggregate perform that operation
on its parts
• At the same time, properties of the parts are often propagated
back to the aggregate
• Propagation is to aggregation as inheritance is to
generalization.
• The major difference is:
• inheritance is an implicit mechanism
• propagation has to be programmed when required

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Interfaces
•An interface describes a portion of the visible behaviour of a set of
objects.
• An interface is similar to a class, except it lacks instance variables
and implemented methods

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Notes and descriptive text

• Descriptive text and other diagrams

• Embed your diagrams in a larger document
• Text can explain aspects of the system using any notation you like
• Highlight and expand on important features, and give rationale
• Notes:
• A note is a small block of text embedded in a UML diagram
• It acts like a comment in a programming language

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5.7 Object Constraint Language (OCL)

•OCL is a specification language designed to formally specify

constraints in software modules
• An OCL expression simply specifies a logical fact (a constraint) about the
system that must remain true
• A constraint cannot have any side-effects
• it cannot compute a non-Boolean result nor modify any data.
• OCL statements in class diagrams can specify what the values of attributes
and associations must be

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OCL statements

•OCL statements can be built from:

• References to role names, association names, attributes and the results of
operations
• The logical values true and false
• Logical operators such as and, or, =, >, < or <> (not equals)
• String values such as: ‘a string’
• Integers and real numbers
• Arithmetic operations *, /, +, -

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An example: constraints on Polygons

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5.8 Detailed Example: A Class Diagram for
Genealogy

• Problems
• A person must have two parents
• Marriages not properly accounted for

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Genealogy example: Possible solutions

Open in Umple

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5.9 The Process of Developing Class
Diagrams
•You can create UML models at different stages and with different
purposes and levels of details
• Exploratory domain model:
• Developed in domain analysis to learn about the domain
• System domain model:
• Models aspects of the domain represented by the system
• System model:
• Includes also classes used to build the user interface and system architecture

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System domain model vs System model

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System domain model vs System model

• The system domain model omits many classes that are needed to build a
complete system
• Can contain less than half the classes of the system.
• Should be developed to be used independently of particular sets of
• user interface classes
• architectural classes
• The complete system model includes
• The system domain model
• User interface classes
• Architectural classes
• Utility classes

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Suggested sequence of activities
• Identify a first set of candidate classes
• Add associations and attributes
• Find generalizations
• List the main responsibilities of each class
• Decide on specific operations
• Iterate over the entire process until the model is satisfactory
• Add or delete classes, associations, attributes, generalizations, responsibilities or
operations
• Identify interfaces
• Apply design patterns (Chapter 6)
• Don’t be too disorganized. Don’t be too rigid either.

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Identifying classes

• When developing a domain model you tend to discover classes

• When you work on the user interface or the system architecture, you tend to
invent classes
• Needed to solve a particular design problem
• (Inventing may also occur when creating a domain model)
• Reuse should always be a concern
• Frameworks
• System extensions
• Similar systems

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A simple technique for discovering domain
classes
• Look at a source material such as a description of requirements
• Extract the nouns and noun phrases
• Eliminate nouns that:
• are redundant
• represent instances
• are vague or highly general
• not needed in the application
• Pay attention to classes in a domain model that represent types of users or
other actors

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Identifying associations and attributes

• Start with classes you think are most central and important
• Decide on the clear and obvious data it must contain and its relationships to
other classes.
• Work outwards towards the classes that are less important.
• Avoid adding many associations and attributes to a class
• A system is simpler if it manipulates less information

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Tips about identifying and specifying valid
associations
• An association should exist if a class
• possesses
• controls
• is connected to
• is related to
• is a part of
• has as parts
• is a member of, or
• has as members
some other class in your model
• Specify the multiplicity at both ends
• Label it clearly.

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Actions versus associations
• A common mistake is to represent actions as if they were
associations

Better: The borrow operation creates a Loan, and

Bad, due to the use of associations the return operation sets the returnedDate
that are actions attribute.

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Identifying attributes

• Look for information that must be maintained about each class

• Several nouns rejected as classes, may now become attributes
• An attribute should generally contain a simple value
• E.g. string, number

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Tips about identifying and specifying valid attributes

• It is not good to have many duplicate attributes

• If a subset of a class’s attributes form a coherent group, then
create a distinct class containing these attributes

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An example (attributes and associations)

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Identifying generalizations and interfaces

• There are two ways to identify generalizations:

• bottom-up
• Group together similar classes creating a new superclass
• top-down
• Look for more general classes first, specialize them if needed
• Create an interface, instead of a superclass if
• The classes are very dissimilar except for having a few operations in common
• One or more of the classes already have their own superclasses
• Different implementations of the same class might be available

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An example (generalization)

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Allocating responsibilities to classes

•A responsibility is something that the system is required to do.

• Each functional requirement must be attributed to one of the classes
• All the responsibilities of a given class should be clearly related.
• If a class has too many responsibilities, consider splitting it into
distinct classes
• If a class has no responsibilities attached to it, then it is probably
useless
• When a responsibility cannot be attributed to any of the existing
classes, then a new class should be created

• To determine responsibilities
• Perform use case analysis
• Look for verbs and nouns describing actions in the system
description

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Categories of responsibilities

• Setting and getting the values of attributes

• Creating and initializing new instances
• Loading to and saving from persistent storage
• Destroying instances
• Adding and deleting links of associations
• Copying, converting, transforming, transmitting or outputting
• Computing numerical results
• Navigating and searching
• Other specialized work

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An example (responsibilities)

• Creating a new regular flight

• Searching for a flight
• Modifying attributes of a flight
• Creating a specific flight
• Booking a passenger
• Canceling a booking

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Prototyping a class diagram on paper

• As you identify classes, you write their names on small cards

• As you identify attributes and responsibilities, you list them on the cards
• If you cannot fit all the responsibilities on one card:
• this suggests you should split the class into two related classes.
• Move the cards around on a whiteboard to arrange them into a class
diagram.
• Draw lines among the cards to represent associations and generalizations.

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Identifying operations

•Operations are needed to realize the responsibilities of each class

• There may be several operations per responsibility
• The main operations that implement a responsibility are normally declared
public
• Other methods that collaborate to perform the responsibility must be as
private as possible

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An example (class collaboration)

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 SpecificFlight * 0..1 Airplane

Class collaboration ‘a’

• Making a bi-directional link between two existing objects;
• e.g. adding a link between an instance of SpecificFlight and an
instance of Airplane.
•
• 1. (public) The instance of SpecificFlight
• makes a one-directional link to the instance of Airplane
• then calls operation 2.
• 2. (non-public) The instance of Airplane
• makes a one-directional link back to the instance of SpecificFlight

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 SpecificFlight 1 0..1
0..1 FlightLog
Class collaboration ‘b’ + createFlightLog [b1] FlightLog [b2]

• Creating an object and linking it to an existing object

• e.g. creating a FlightLog, and linking it to a SpecificFlight.
•
• 1. (public) The instance of SpecificFlight
• calls the constructor of FlightLog (operation 2)
• then makes a one-directional link to the new instance of FlightLog.
• 2. (non-public) Class FlightLog’s constructor
• makes a one-directional link back to the instance of SpecificFlight.

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 PassengerRole Booking SpecificFlight
+ makeBooking [c1] 1 * * 1
Booking [c2] addLinkToBooking [c3]
addLinkToBooking [c4]

Class
• collaboration ‘c’class, given two existing objects
Creating an association
• e.g. creating an instance of Booking, which will link a
SpecificFlight to a PassengerRole.
• 1. (public) The instance of PassengerRole
• calls the constructor of Booking (operation 2).
• 2. (non-public) Class Booking’s constructor, among its other actions
• makes a one-directional link back to the instance of
PassengerRole
• makes a one-directional link to the instance of SpecificFlight
• calls operations 3 and 4.
• 3. (non-public) The instance of SpecificFlight
• makes a one-directional link to the instance of Booking.
• 4. (non-public) The instance of PassengerRole
• makes a one-directional link to the instance of Booking.

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 Airplane
SpecificFlight * 0..1

Class collaboration ‘d’

addLinkToSpecificFlight [a2, d3]
+ changeAirplane [d1] deleteLinkToSpecificFlight [d2]

• Changing the destination of a link

• e.g. changing the Airplane of to a SpecificFlight, from airplane1
to airplane2
• 1. (public) The instance of SpecificFlight
• deletes the link to airplane1
• makes a one-directional link to airplane2
• calls operation 2
• then calls operation 3.
• 2. (non-public) airplane1
• deletes its one-directional link to the instance of
SpecificFlight.
• 3. (non-public) airplane2
• makes a one-directional link to the instance of
SpecificFlight.

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 EmployeeRole SpecificFlight
* *

Class collaboration ‘e’ + getName [e2] crewMember + findCrewMember [e1]

• Searching for an associated instance

• e.g. searching for a crew member associated with a SpecificFlight
that has a certain name.
•
• 1. (public) The instance of SpecificFlight
• creates an Iterator over all the crewMember links of the SpecificFlight\
• for each of them call operation 2, until it finds a match.
• 2. (may be public) The instance of EmployeeRole returns its name.

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5.10 Implementing Class Diagrams in Java
• Attributes are implemented as instance variables
• Generalizations are implemented using extends
• Interfaces are implemented using implements
• Associations are normally implemented using instance variables
• Divide each two-way association into two one-way associations
—so each associated class has an instance variable.
• For a one-way association where the multiplicity at the other
end is ‘one’ or ‘optional’
—declare a variable of that class (a reference)
• For a one-way association where the multiplicity at the other
end is ‘many’:
—use a collection class implementing List, such as Vector

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Example: SpecificFlight
class SpecificFlight
{
private Calendar date;
private RegularFlight regularFlight;
...
// Constructor that should only be called from
// addSpecificFlight
SpecificFlight( Calendar aDate, RegularFlight aRegularFlight)
{
date = aDate;
regularFlight = aRegularFlight;
}
}

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Example: RegularFlight
class RegularFlight
{
private List specificFlights;
...
// Method that has primary responsibility
public void addSpecificFlight(Calendar aDate)
{
SpecificFlight newSpecificFlight;
newSpecificFlight = new SpecificFlight(aDate, this);
specificFlights.add(newSpecificFlight);
}
...
}

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5.11 Difficulties and Risks when creating class
diagrams

• Modeling is particularly difficult skill

• Even excellent programmers have difficulty thinking at the appropriate level of
abstraction
• Education traditionally focus more on design and programming than modeling
• Resolution:
• Ensure that tem members have adequate training
• Have experienced modeler as part of the team
• Review all models thoroughly

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