In This Chapter
Building state diagrams
Giving objects a memory
Working with different kinds of states
Showing event transitions
Relating sequence diagrams to state diagrams
E ach object in your system has a life. You create it, it interacts with other objects for a specified time, and then you remove the object from your system. This chapter shows you how to use UML to describe the life of an object—from its birth to its death. This chapter introduces you to the basic state-diagram notation for showing an object’s internal states, transitions between states, and the timing of an object’s behavior. To help make state diagrams less of a hassle, we provide steps for building them—and show how state diagrams relate to class diagrams and sequence diagrams (scenarios).