UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. It is a way of visualizing a software program by using a collection of diagrams. The main aim of UML is to define a standard way to visualize the way a system has been designed, it is not a programming language but rather a visual language. In 1997, UML was adopted as a standard by the Object Management Group (OMG) and still it has been managed by it. UML diagram is used with object-oriented programming and is organized into two distinct groups which is Structural diagrams which represents the static aspects of the system and behavioral Diagram which represents the dynamic aspect of the system.
The Class diagram is a kind of Structural diagram, it shows how the code is being put in the system and one can know the different aspects of the code just by looking at the class diagram. While looking at the class diagram there are three sections: Upper, Middle, and Bottom. The upper section contains the class name, The Middle section contains the attributes of the class and The Bottom section includes class operations (methods). The Class has different access levels depending on the access modifier (visibility) and they have symbols such as Public (+), Private (-), Protected (#), Package (~), Static (Underlined). These symbols help one to identify the visibility of different attributes just by looking at the symbols. Classes are connected with each other in different ways such as Association, Multiplicity, Aggregation, Inheritance, Composition, Bi-directional, and so on. This helps if a class has been inherited from different another class by using the sign by which it connected the other class, which helps the viewer to understand the UML diagram easily.
I used this topic because it helped me a lot in understanding how the UML diagram works and the different properties. Homework 1 was based on the UML diagram; this article goes over everything you should know to create UML diagrams. It also has links that explain more about the subject matter and makes things clear. And because I am interested in software development, UML is one of the main tools for software engineers. In the future, the class diagram is important too, since it’s object-oriented and helps when working on a big project. The topic provided examples that made it easy to understand different concepts of UML diagrams such as the visibility of attributes, arrows that show how classes are connected to each other which makes the whole concepts of the UML diagrams easy to understand.
The article used: https://drawio-app.com/uml-diagrams/
From the blog CS@Worcester – Mausam Mishra's Blog by mousammishra21 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.