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Posts Tagged ‘modeling’

UML Class Diagrams – part 1

UML stands for the Unified Modeling Language and it is a system for communicating the design and development of a software system. Object-oriented programming (OOP) has developed as the major tool to manage program complexity, and UML is the primary method of diagramming object-oriented programming structures and interactions. UML diagrams are used to create designs, communicate between developers, and document code so that it can be understood quickly. The most common type of UML diagram is a class diagram, which is sometimes called a static diagram.

A class diagram models classes and the relationships between them. The central element of class diagrams is a rectangular box that is used to represent a class. Typically, the box is separated into three sections that hold the class name, attributes, and operations. Attributes and operations are generic object-oriented design (OOD) terms for variables and functions. The layout of these items is shown here:

A simple example class should help to make these abstractions concrete. The point class header shown below has two attributes that given by the x and y double variables that represent the coordinates of the point in the plane. The class also has two operations: one to display the point and one to find the distance to another point. The point class has four members in all, all of which are public.

class CPoint
{
public:
    double mdX;
    double mdY;

    void Display();
    double Distance(CPoint qP);
};

With a basic illustration, this class can be represent by the simple UML diagram below. Notice that the member variables are in the attributes section and the member functions are in the operations section. That’s pretty straightforward, so far. However, this is just a simple diagram, and there are many other elements that we could have shown in it.

Eventually, we will explain how to diagram this class completely and much more, but it is important to remember that diagrams do not need to display all of the details of the code. UML diagrams are for communication and understanding; they should be used to emphasize the elements that are important to the context. As we will demonstrate in our upcoming examples, extraneous details will often be omitted to highlight important points.

To be continued . . .

 

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