Introduction to UML

Speaking a common language

• The importance of modelling
• Enabling concise communication
• The evolution of UML

Elements of UML

• Building blocks: things, relationships and diagrams
• Architectural views: use case, design, implementation, process and deployment
• Levels of detail: visualisation, specification and construction

Object-oriented concepts

• Objects and classes
• Links and relationships
• Inheritance and polymorphism

Modelling the Structure of a System

Specifying classes

• Modelling user-defined types as classes
• Representing information as attributes
• Representing functionality as operations

Identifying relationships between classes

• Dependencies
• Associations
• Aggregation and composition
• Generalisation

Object and class diagrams: the core of UML

• Showing classes and their relationships
• Depicting snapshots using object diagrams
• Defining information models with class diagrams

Modelling the Behaviour of a System

Use case diagrams: describing user requirements

• Representing systems boundaries
• Actors and use cases
• Notations for refinement

Sequence and communication diagrams: depicting typical event scenarios

• Events and signals
• Showing time-ordered behaviour
• Expanding use cases into the developers' view
• Converting between sequence and communication diagrams

Expressing real-time aspects

• Synchronous/asynchronous messages
• Representing timing constraints and transmission delays
• Implementing timing diagrams

Representing State Machines

State machine diagrams: capturing state-dependent behaviour

• States, transitions and events
• Concurrent substates
• History and synch states

Activity diagrams: specifying behavioural logic

• Modelling workflows
• Partitioning activities using swimlanes
• Concurrency and synchronisation of parallel activities

Architectural Modelling

Packages and interfaces

• Distinguishing between classes/interfaces
• Exposing class and package interfaces
• Subscribing to interfaces

Component and deployment diagrams

• Describing dependencies
• Deploying components across threads, processes and processors
• Describing internal structure using composite structure diagrams

Design patterns

• Patterns, mechanisms and frameworks
• Representing design patterns
• Referencing design patterns

Applying UML

Model-Driven Architecture (MDA)

• The Meta-Object Facility (MOF)
• Common Warehouse Meta-model (CWM)

Life cycle stages

• Using UML within the Unified Process
• Modelling business processes
• Capturing requirements
• Systems analysis
• Software design