UML Guide - A Tutorial and Reference

Introduction
The Unified Modeling Language is a standard design specification that is overseen by the Object Management Group (OMG). UML came about from standard practice in the software industry, it's origin came from the unification of the OMT(Object Model Technique) and Booch method. UML provides a nice framework for designing and analyzing process, structure and their relationships. UML is a collection of the best technical modeling specifications and practices is use today. It is mainly used in developing software requiring Object Oriented Analysis (OOA) and Object Oriented Design (OOD).

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UML provides the blueprint elements for software architecture.

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In UML an object is a "specific" instance of a class element as depicted by the following UML class diagram.

Student

-name:string -GPA:int -Dept:string

+AttendClass() +DoHomework() +TakeExam()

Diagram 1 - Class Diagram

There can be many instances for a given class, using the Student class as a example, we can have several Student objects named Shivaji, Tammy and Vijay. It is their name that given the object it's identity, which is not to be confused with the name of the class Student

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Note: the object identity comes first, followed by the class name that is separated by a ":" sign. Finally both the object identity and class name are underlined.

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