UML-Unit 2

Class and Object Diagrams

Class Diagrams
• A class diagram shows a set of classes, interfaces, and collaborations and
their relationships.
• Graphically, a class diagram is a collection of vertices and arcs.
• Class diagrams commonly contain the following things:
• Classes
• Interfaces
• Collaborations
• Dependency, generalization, and association relationships.
• Like all other diagrams, class diagrams may contain notes and constraints.
• It may also contain packages or subsystems
Common Uses
• Class diagrams are to model the static design view of a system. This view
primarily supports the functional requirements of a system.
• Class diagrams are used in one of three ways:
• To model the vocabulary of a system.
• To model simple collaborations.
• To model a logical database schema
• Modeling the vocabulary of a system: It involves making a decision about
which abstractions are a part of the system and which fall outside its
boundaries.
• Modelling simple collaborations: A collaboration is a society of classes,
interfaces, and other elements that work together to provide some
cooperative behavior that's bigger than the sum of all the elements.
• Modeling logical database schema: Schemas are modelled for the
databases using class diagrams.
Common Modelling Techniques
• Modelling Simple Collaboration
• Modelling a Logical Database Schema
Modelling Simple Collaboration
• To model a collaboration
• Identify the mechanism to model. A mechanism represents some function or
behaviour of the part of the system being modelled that results from the
interaction of a society of classes, interfaces, and other things.
• For each mechanism, identify the classes, interfaces, and other collaborations
that participate in this collaboration. Identify the relationships among these
things, as well.
• Use scenarios to walk through these things. Along the way, the parts of the
model that were missing will be discovered and parts that were just plain
semantically wrong.
• Populate these elements with their contents. For classes, start with getting a
good balance of responsibilities. Then, over time, turn these into concrete
attributes and operations.
Modelling a Logical Database Schema
• Identify those classes whose state must transcend the lifetime of their
applications.
• Create a class diagram that contains these classes and mark them as persistent (a
standard tagged value). Define the own set of tagged values to address database-
specific details.
• Expand the structural details of these classes. In general, this means specifying
the details of their attributes and focusing on the associations and their
cardinalities that structure these classes.
• Watch for common patterns that complicate physical database design, such as
cyclic associations, one-to-one associations, and n-ary associations. Where
necessary, create intermediate abstractions to simplify your logical structure.
• Consider the behavior of these classes by expanding operations that are
important for data access and data integrity. To provide a better separation of
concerns, business rules concerned with the manipulation of sets of these
objects should be encapsulated in a layer above these persistent classes.
• Where possible, use tools to transform the logical design into a physical design.
Modelling a schema
Objects
• An object diagram is a diagram that shows a set of objects and their
relationships at a point in time.
• Graphically, an object diagram is a collection of vertices and arcs
• An object diagram is a special kind of diagram and shares the same
common properties as all other diagrams—that is, a name and
graphical contents that are a projection into a model
• Object diagrams commonly contain
• Objects
• Links
• Like all other diagrams, object diagrams may contain notes and
constraints.
• Object diagrams may also contain packages or subsystems
Common Uses
• Object diagrams are used to model the static design view or static
process view of a system like class diagrams.
• To model the static design view or static process view of a system,
object diagrams are used in one way:
• To model object structures
• Modeling Object Structures
• Modeling object structures involves taking a snapshot of the objects in a
system at a given moment in time.
• An object diagram represents one static frame in the dynamic storyboard
represented by an interaction diagram
Common Modelling Techniques
• Modelling Object Structures
• Identify the mechanism to model. A mechanism represents some function or
behaviour of the part of the system to be modelled that results from the
interaction of a society of classes, interfaces, and other things.
• For each mechanism, identify the classes, interfaces, and other elements that
participate in this collaboration; identify the relationships among these
things, as well.
• Consider one scenario that walks through this mechanism. Freeze that
scenario at a moment in time, and render each object that participates in the
mechanism.
• Expose the state and attribute values of each such object, as necessary, to
understand the scenario.
• Similarly, expose the links among these objects, representing instances of
associations among them.
Object Diagram