Unified Modeling Language (UML) Tutorial

By David Braun, Jeff Sivils, Alex Shapiro and Jerry Versteegh

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a standard language for specifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of software systems, as well as for business modeling and other non-software systems. The UML represents a collection of best engineering practices that have proven successful in the modeling of large and complex systems.1 The UML is a very important part of developing object oriented software and the software development process. The UML uses mostly graphical notations to express the design of software projects. Using the UML helps project teams communicate, explore potential designs, and validate the architectural design of the software.

Goals of UML

The primary goals in the design of the UML were:

• Provide users with a ready-to-use, expressive visual modeling language so they can develop and exchange meaningful models.
• Provide extensibility and specialization mechanisms to extend the core concepts.
• Be independent of particular programming languages and development processes.
• Provide a formal basis for understanding the modeling language.
• Encourage the growth of the OO tools market.
• Support higher-level development concepts such as collaborations, frameworks, patterns and components.
• Integrate best practices.

Why Use UML?

As the strategic value of software increases for many companies, the industry looks for techniques to automate the production of software and to improve quality and reduce cost and time-to-market. These techniques include component technology, visual programming, patterns and frameworks. Businesses also seek techniques to manage the complexity of systems as they increase in scope and scale. In particular, they recognize the need to solve recurring architectural problems, such as physical distribution, concurrency, replication, security, load balancing and fault tolerance. Additionally, the development for the World Wide Web, while making some things simpler, has exacerbated these architectural problems. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) was designed to respond to these needs.

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UML Process

By Sharam Hekmat

UMLProcess is a defined process for developing software systems using object technology. The
purpose of this document is to define the UMLProcess at a level that is suitable for practitioners who have had no prior exposure to a similar process.

This document is intended to be a concise guide to the processes it covers, rather than giving a detailed description of each process. By focusing on the key concepts (and deferring the practical details to workshops and mentoring sessions), we can maximise the usefulness of the handbook as a learning tool.

If you plan to implement the UMLProcess in your organisation, we recommend that you use a UML modelling tool to formalise your modelling activities. PragSoft provides two very popular tools for this purpose:

UMLStudio allows you to create UML models, generate code from them, and reverse engineering UML models from code. UMLServer allows you to deploy UMLStudio in a collaborative environment.

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Introduction to the Unified Modeling Language

If you’re a complete UML beginner, then consider this as UML 101, a basic introduction to the notational elements of the UML.

What is UML?
The easiest answer to that question is a quote: “The UML is the standard language for specifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting allthe artifacts of a software system.” The more complex answer requires a short history lesson, because the UML is really a synthesis of several notations by Grady Booch, Jim Rumbaugh, Ivar Jacobson and many others.

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Unified Modeling Language

Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created by, the Object Management Group.

UML includes a set of graphical notation techniques to create visual models of software-intensive systems.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is used to specify, visualize, modify, construct and document the artifacts of an object-oriented software intensive system under development. UML offers a standard way to visualize a system's architectural blueprints, including elements such as:

    * actors
    * business processes
    * (logical) components
    * activities
    * programming language statements
    * database schemas, and
    * reusable software components.

UML combines best techniques from data modeling (entity relationship diagrams), business modeling (work flows), object modeling, and component modeling. It can be used with all processes, throughout the software development life cycle, and across different implementation technologies. UML has synthesized the notations of the Booch method, the Object-modeling technique (OMT) and Object-oriented software engineering (OOSE) by fusing them into a single, common and widely usable modeling language. UML aims to be a standard modeling language which can model concurrent and distributed systems. UML is a de facto industry standard, and is evolving under the auspices of the Object Management Group (OMG). OMG initially called for information on object-oriented methodologies that might create a rigorous software modeling language. Many industry leaders have responded in earnest to help create the UML standard.

UML models may be automatically transformed to other representations (e.g. Java) by means of QVT-like transformation languages, supported by the OMG. UML is extensible, offering the following mechanisms for customization: profiles and stereotype. The semantics of extension by profiles have been improved with the UML 2.0 major revision.

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This Unified Modeling Language (UML) Dictionary

This Unified Modeling Language (UML) Dictionary, put together by Kendall Scott, is based on version 1.0 of "UML Semantics", whose primary authors are the "three amigos," Grady Booch, Jim Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson. That document provides a formal description of the meta-model that underlies the UML; this document contains much of the same information in a format that I hope people find enlightening and useful. The UML Dictionary has been designed as a supplement to the Addison-Wesley book UML Distilled, by Martin Fowler with Kendall Scott, which has lots of diagrams that illustrate UML notation, plus friendly but authoritative text written by an acknowledged expert in object-oriented analysis and design.

Over 200 terms appear in this Dictionary. Pick a letter, any letter:

by Kendall Scott
I intend to update and expand the UML Dictionary to comform with version 1.1 of the UML, which the Object Management Group (OMG) declared to be a standard in November of 1997. However, I do have a full-time job, and as of February 11, I will be writing another UML book (with Doug Rosenberg, president of ICONIX; this one will focus on use cases), so it will be a while before the 1.1 Dictionary is in place. In the meantime, happy reading!

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How to Draw UML diagrams

What is UML?

UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. This object-oriented system of notation has evolved from the work of Grady Booch, James Rumbaugh, Ivar Jacobson, and the Rational Software Corporation. These renowned computer scientists fused their respective technologies into a single, standardized model. Today, UML is accepted by the Object Management Group (OMG) as the standard for modeling object oriented programs.

Types of UML Diagrams
UML defines nine types of diagrams: class (package), object, use case, sequence, collaboration, statechart, activity, component, and deployment.

Class Diagrams
Class diagrams are the backbone of almost every object oriented method, including UML. They describe the static structure of a system.

What is a UML Class Diagram?
Class diagrams are the backbone of almost every object-oriented method including UML. They describe the static structure of a system.

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Database design with UML and SQL, 3rd edition

By Tom Jewett

This third edition of dbDesign is a general update, both to meet legal requirements for U.S. “Section 508” accessibility and to bring the code into compliance with the latest World Wide Web Consortium standards. In the process, I've tried to make the SQL examples as generic as possible, although you will still have to consult the documentation for your own database system. Graphics no longer require the SVG plugin; large-image and text-only views of each graphic are provided for all readers; the menu is now arranged by topic areas; and the print version (minus left-side navigation) is done automatically by a style sheet.

The second edition was largely motivated by the very helpful comments of Prof. Alvaro Monge, as well as by my own observations in two semesters of using its predecessor in class. Major changes included the clear separation of UML from its implementation in the relational model, the introduction of relational algebra terminology as an aid to understanding SQL, and an increased emphasis on natural-language understanding of the design.

Following are the few topics covered in this UML book

• Basic UML & SQL
• Models
• Classes & schemes
• Rows & tables
• Associations
• Keys
• UML design
• Many-to-many
• Many-to-many 2
• Subkeys
• Repeated attributes
• Multivalued attributes
• Domains
• Enumerated domains
• Subclasses
• Aggregation
• Recursive associations
• Normalization
• SQL technique
• Queries
• DDL & DML
• Join
• Multiple joins
• Join types
• Functions
• Subqueries
• Union & minus
• Views & indexes

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