The early part of the 1990s saw a greatly heightened interest in the object paradigm and related technologies. New object-based programming languages, such as SmallTalk, Eiffel, C++, and Java, were devised and adopted. These were accompanied by a prodigious and confusing glut of object-oriented (OO) software design methods and modeling notations. Thus, in his very thorough overview of OO analysis and design methods (covering more than 800 pages), Graham lists more than 50 “seminal” methods [Graham01]. Given that the object paradigm consists of relatively few fundamental concepts, including encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism, there was clearly heavy overlap and conceptual alignment across these methods—much of which was obscured by notational and other differences of no consequence. This caused great confusion and needless market fragmentation, which, in turn, impeded the adoption of the useful new paradigm. Software developers had to make difficult and binding choices between mutually incompatible languages, tools, methods, and vendors.
For this reason, when Rational Software proposed the Unified Modeling Language(UML) initiative, led by Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson, and Jim Rumbaugh, the reaction was immediate and positive. Rational did not intend to propose anything new, but—through collaboration among top industry thought leaders—consolidated the best features of the various OO approaches into one vendor-independent modeling language and notation. Because of that, UML quickly became the first de facto standard and, following its Object Management Group adoption in 1996, a bona-fide industry standard [OMG03a] [OMG04] [RJB05].
Since then, the majority of modeling tool vendors have adopted and supported UML in their tools. The language has became an essential part of the computer science and engineering curricula in universities throughout the world and in various professional training programs; academic and other researchers use it as a convenient lingua franca.
UML also helped raise general awareness about the value of modeling when dealing with software complexity. Although this highly useful technique is almost as old as software itself (with flowcharts and finite state machines as early examples), most practitioners have generally been slow to accept it as anything more than a minor power assist. It is fair to say that this is still the dominant attitude, which is why so-called “model-driven” methods are encountering great resistance in this community.
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UML also helped raise general awareness about the value of modeling when dealing with software complexity. Although this highly useful technique is almost as old as software itself (with flowcharts and finite state machines as early examples), most practitioners have generally been slow to accept it as anything more than a minor power assist. It is fair to say that this is still the dominant attitude, which is why so-called “model-driven” methods are encountering great resistance in this community.
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