UML Introduction

Subpage Listing
 Activity diagrams
 Class Diagram
 Collaboration diagrams
 Component diagrams
 Deployment diagrams
 Object Diagram
 Package Diagram
 Screen Flow Diagram
 Sequence diagrams
 Statechart diagrams
 Use case diagrams
The heart of object-oriented problem solving is the construction of a model. The model abstracts the essential details of the underlying problem from its usually
complicated real world. Several modeling tools are wrapped under the heading of the UML™, which stands for Unified Modeling Language™. The purpose of this
course is to present important highlights of the UML.

At the center of the UML are its nine kinds of modeling diagrams, which we describe here.

 Use case diagrams

 Class diagrams
 Object diagrams
 Sequence diagrams
 Collaboration diagrams
 Statechart diagrams
 Activity diagrams
 Component diagrams
 Deployment diagrams

UML got two additional diagrams:

 Package Diagram
  Screen Flow Diagram

Why is UML important?

Let's look at this question from the point of view of the construction trade. Architects design buildings. Builders use the designs to create buildings. The more
complicated the building, the more critical the communication between architect and builder. Blueprints are the standard graphical language that both architects and
builders must learn as part of their trade.

Writing software is not unlike constructing a building. The more complicated the underlying system, the more critical the communication among everyone involved
in creating and deploying the software. In the past decade, the UML has emerged as the software blueprint language for analysts, designers, and programmers alike.
It is now part of the software trade. The UML gives everyone from business analyst to designer to programmer a common vocabulary to talk about software design.

The UML is applicable to object-oriented problem solving. Anyone interested in learning UML must be familiar with the underlying tenet of object-oriented
problem solving -- it all begins with the construction of a model. A model is an abstraction of the underlying problem. The domain is the actual world from which
the problem comes.

Models consist of objects that interact by sending each other messages. Think of an object as "alive." Objects have things they know (attributes) and things they
can do (behaviors or operations). The values of an object's attributes determine its state.

Classes are the "blueprints" for objects. A class wraps attributes (data) and behaviors (methods or functions) into a single distinct entity. Objects are instances of
classes.
Class Diagram
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 Activity diagrams
 Class Diagram
 Collaboration diagrams
 Component diagrams
 Deployment diagrams
 Object Diagram
 Package Diagram
 Screen Flow Diagram
 Sequence diagrams
 Statechart diagrams
 Use case diagrams

A Class diagram gives an overview of a system by showing its classes and the relationships among them. Class diagrams are static -- they display what interacts but not what happens
when they do interact.

The class diagram below models a customer order from a retail catalog. The central class is the Order. Associated with it are the Customer making the purchase and the Payment. A
Payment is one of three kinds: Cash, Check, or Credit. The order contains OrderDetails (line items), each with its associated Item.

UML class notation is a rectangle divided into three parts: class name, attributes, and operations. Names of abstract classes, such as Payment, are in italics. Relationships between
classes are the connecting links.

Our class diagram has three kinds of relationships.

 association -- a relationship between instances of the two classes. There is an association between two classes if an instance of one class must know about the other in order to
perform its work. In a diagram, an association is a link connecting two classes.
 aggregation -- an association in which one class belongs to a collection. An aggregation has a diamond end pointing to the part containing the whole. In our
diagram, Order has a collection of OrderDetails.
 generalization -- an inheritance link indicating one class is a superclass of the other. A generalization has a triangle pointing to the superclass. Payment is a superclass of Cash,
Check, and Credit

An association has two ends. An end may have a role name to clarify the nature of the association. For example, an OrderDetail is a line item of each Order.

A navigability arrow on an association shows which direction the association can be traversed or queried. An OrderDetail can be queried about its Item, but not the other way around.
The arrow also lets you know who "owns" the association's implementation; in this case, OrderDetail has an Item. Associations with no navigability arrows are bi-directional.

The multiplicity of an association end is the number of possible instances of the class associated with a single instance of the other end. Multiplicities are single numbers or ranges of
 numbers. In our example, there can be only one Customer for each Order, but a Customer can have any number of Orders.

This table gives the most common multiplicities.

Meaning
Multiplicities
0..1 zero or one instance. The notation n . . m indicates n to m instances.
0..* or * no limit on the number of instances (including none).
1 exactly one instance
1..* at least one instance

Every class diagram has classes, associations, and multiplicities. Navigability and roles are optional items placed in a diagram to provide clarity.

Object Diagram
Subpage Listing
 Activity diagrams

 Class Diagram

 Collaboration diagrams

 Component diagrams

 Deployment diagrams

 Object Diagram

 Package Diagram

 Screen Flow Diagram

 Sequence diagrams

 Statechart diagrams

 Use case diagrams

Object diagrams are also closely linked to class diagrams. Just as an object is an instance of a class, an object diagram could be viewed as an instance of a class diagram. Object diagrams describe the static structure of a system at a particular time
and they are used to test the accuracy of class diagrams. This small class diagram shows that a university Department can contain lots of other Departments.
 The object diagram below instantiates the class diagram, replacing it by a concrete example.

Each object is represented as a rectangle, which contains the name of the object and its class underlined and separated by a colon.. Class or instance names may be omitted from object diagrams as long as the diagram meaning is still clear.

Use case diagrams

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 Activity diagrams
 Class Diagram
 Collaboration diagrams
 Component diagrams
 Deployment diagrams
 Object Diagram
 Package Diagram
 Screen Flow Diagram
 Sequence diagrams
 Statechart diagrams
 Use case diagrams
Use case diagrams describe what a system does from the standpoint of an external observer. The emphasis is on what a system does rather than how.

Use case diagrams are closely connected to scenarios. A scenario is an example of what happens when someone interacts with the system. Here is a scenario for a medical clinic.

"A patient calls the clinic to make an appointment for a yearly checkup. The receptionist finds the nearest empty time slot in the appointment book and schedules the appointment for that time slot. "

A use case is a summary of scenarios for a single task or goal. An actor is who or what initiates the events involved in that task. Actors are simply roles that people or objects play. The picture below is a Make
Appointment use case for the medical clinic. The actor is a Patient. The connection between actor and use case is a communication association (or communication for short).

Actors are stick figures. Use cases are ovals. Communications are lines that link actors to use cases.
 A use case diagram is a collection of actors, use cases, and their communications. We've put Make Appointment as part of a diagram with four actors and four use cases. Notice that a single use case can have multiple
actors.

Use case diagrams are helpful in three areas.

 determining features (requirements). New use cases often generate new requirements as the system is analyzed and the design takes shape.
 communicating with clients. Their notational simplicity makes use case diagrams a good way for developers to communicate with clients.
 generating test cases. The collection of scenarios for a use case may suggest a suite of test cases for those scenarios.

Sequence diagrams
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 Activity diagrams
 Class Diagram
 Collaboration diagrams
 Component diagrams
 Deployment diagrams
 Object Diagram
 Package Diagram
 Screen Flow Diagram
 Sequence diagrams
 Statechart diagrams
 Use case diagrams
Class and object diagrams are static model views. Interaction diagrams are dynamic. They describe how objects collaborate.

A sequence diagram is an interaction diagram that details how operations are carried out -- what messages are sent and when. Sequence diagrams are organized according to time. The time progresses as you go down the
page. The objects involved in the operation are listed from left to right according to when they take part in the message sequence.

Below is a sequence diagram for making a hotel reservation. The object initiating the sequence of messages is a Reservation window.
Collaboration diagrams
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 Activity diagrams
 Class Diagram
 Collaboration diagrams
 Component diagrams
 Deployment diagrams
 Object Diagram
 Package Diagram
 Screen Flow Diagram
 Sequence diagrams
 Statechart diagrams
 Use case diagrams
A collaboration diagram describes interactions among objects in terms of sequenced messages. Collaboration diagrams represent a
Collaboration diagrams are also interaction diagrams.
combination of information taken from class, sequence, and use case diagrams describing both the static structure and dynamic behavior of a system.

The object-role rectangles are labeled with either class or object names (or both). Class names are preceded by colons ( : ).

Unlike sequence diagrams, collaboration diagrams do not have an explicit way to denote time and instead number messages in order of execution. Each message in a collaboration diagram
has a sequence number. The top-level message is numbered 1. Messages at the same level (sent during the same call) have the same decimal prefix but suffixes of 1, 2, etc. according to when they occur.

Statechart diagrams
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 Activity diagrams
 Class Diagram
 Collaboration diagrams
 Component diagrams
 Deployment diagrams
 Object Diagram
 Package Diagram
 Screen Flow Diagram
 Sequence diagrams
 Statechart diagrams
 Use case diagrams
Objects have behaviors and state. The state of an object depends on its current activity or condition. A statechart diagram shows the possible states of the object and the transitions that cause a change in state.

Our example diagram models the login part of an online banking system. Logging in consists of entering a valid social security number and personal id number, then submitting the information for validation.

Logging in can be factored into four non-overlapping states: Getting SSN, Getting PIN, Validating, and Rejecting. From each state comes a complete set of transitions that determine the subsequent state.

States are rounded rectangles. Transitions are arrows from one state to another. Events or conditions that trigger transitions are written beside the arrows. Our diagram has two self-transition, one on Getting SSN and
another on Getting PIN.

The initial state (black circle) is a dummy to start the action. Final states are also dummy states that terminate the action. The action that occurs as a result of an event or condition is expressed in the form /action. While
in its Validating state, the object does not wait for an outside event to trigger a transition. Instead, it performs an activity. The result of that activity determines its subsequent state

Activity diagrams
Quick Link
 Activity diagrams
 Class Diagram
 Collaboration diagrams
 Component diagrams
 Deployment diagrams
 Object Diagram
 Package Diagram
 Screen Flow Diagram
 Sequence diagrams
 Statechart diagrams
 Use case diagrams
An activity diagram is essentially a fancy flowchart. Activity diagrams and statechart diagrams are related. While a statechart diagram focuses attention on an object undergoing a
process (or on a process as an object), an activity diagram focuses on the flow of activities involved in a single process. The activity diagram shows the how those activities depend on
one another.

For our example, we used the following process.

"Withdraw money from a bank account through an ATM." The three involved classes (people, etc.) of the activity are Customer, ATM, and Bank. The process begins at the black
start circle at the top and ends at the concentric white/black stop circles at the bottom. The activities are rounded rectangles.

Activity diagrams can be divided into object swimlanes that determine which object is responsible for which activity. A single transition comes out of each activity, connecting it to
the next activity.

A transition may branch into two or more mutually exclusive transitions. Guard expressions (inside [ ]) label the transitions coming out of a branch. A branch and its
subsequent merge marking the end of the branch appear in the diagram as hollow diamonds. A transition may fork into two or more parallel activities. The fork and the
subsequent join of the threads coming out of the fork appear in the diagram as solid bars.
Component diagrams
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 Activity diagrams
 Class Diagram
 Collaboration diagrams
 Component diagrams
 Deployment diagrams
 Object Diagram
 Package Diagram
 Screen Flow Diagram
 Sequence diagrams
 Statechart diagrams
 Use case diagrams
Component diagrams illustrate the pieces of software, embedded controllers, etc., that will make up a system. A component diagram has a higher level of abstraction than a Class
Diagram - usually a component is implemented by one or more classes (or objects) at runtime. They are building blocks so a component can eventually encompass a large portion of a
system.

The diagram above demonstrates some components and their inter-relationships. Assembly connectors "link" the provided interfaces supplied by "Product" and "Customer" to the
required interfaces specified by "Order". A dependency relationship maps a customer's associated account details to the required interface; "Payment", indicated by "Order".
Deployment diagrams
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 Activity diagrams
 Class Diagram
 Collaboration diagrams
 Component diagrams
 Deployment diagrams
 Object Diagram
 Package Diagram
 Screen Flow Diagram
 Sequence diagrams
 Statechart diagrams
 Use case diagrams
Deployment diagram depicts a static view of the run-time configuration of processing nodes
and the components that run on those nodes. In other words, deployment diagrams show the
hardware for your system, the software that is installed on that hardware, and the middleware
used to connect the disparate machines to one another.
 The physical hardware is made up of nodes. Each component belongs on a node. Components are shown as rectangles with two tabs at the upper left.

Package Diagram
Subpage Listing
 Activity diagrams
 Class Diagram
 Collaboration diagrams
 Component diagrams
 Deployment diagrams
 Object Diagram
 Package Diagram
 Screen Flow Diagram
 Sequence diagrams
 Statechart diagrams
 Use case diagrams

To simplify complex class diagrams, you can group classes into packages. A package is a

collection of logically related UML elements. The diagram below is a business model in which the classes are grouped into packages.

Packages appear as rectangles with small tabs at the top. The package name is on the tab or inside the rectangle. The dotted arrows are dependencies. One package depends on another if changes in
the other could possibly force changes in the first.