History of the UML

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During the 1990s many different methodologies, along with their own set of notations, were introduced to the market. Three of the most popular methods were OMT (Rumbaugh), Booch, and OOSE (Jacobson). Each method had its own value and emphasis. OMT was strong in analysis and weaker in the design area. Booch 1991 was strong in design and weaker in analysis. Jacobson was strong in behavior analysis and weaker in the other areas.

As time moved on, Booch wrote his second book, which adopted a lot of the good analysis techniques advocated by Rumbaugh and Jacobson, among others. Rumbaugh published a series of articles that have become known as OMT-2 that adopted a lot of the good design techniques of Booch. The methods were beginning to converge but they still had their own unique notations. The use of different notations brought confusion to the market since one symbol meant different things to different people. For example, a filled circle was a multiplicity indicator in OMT and an aggregation symbol in Booch. You will hear the term "method wars" being used to describe this period of time ”is a class a cloud or a rectangle? Which one is better?

The end of the method wars as far as notation is concerned comes with the adoption of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). "UML is a language used to specify, visualize, and document the artifacts of an object-oriented system under development. It represents the unification of the Booch, OMT, and Objectory notations, as well as the best ideas from a number of other methodologists as shown in Figure 1-2. By unifying the notations used by these object-oriented methods, the Unified Modeling Language provides the basis for a de facto standard in the domain of object-oriented analysis and design founded on a wide base of user experience." ^[2]

^[2] The Unified Method , Draft Edition (0.8). Rational Software Corporation, October, 1995.

Figure 1-2. UML Inputs

The UML is an attempt to standardize the artifacts of analysis and design: semantic models, syntactic notation, and diagrams. The first public draft (version 0.8) was introduced in October 1995. Feedback from the public and Ivar Jacobson's input were included in the next two versions (0.9 in July 1996 and 0.91 in October 1996). Version 1.0 was presented to the Object Management Group (OMG) for standardization in July 1997. Additional enhancements were incorporated into the 1.1 version of UML, which was presented to the OMG in September 1997. In November 1997, the UML was adopted as the standard modeling language by the OMG. The current version of the UML is UML 1.4 and work is progressing on UML 2.0. You can find more information on the UML by visiting the OMG web site at www.omg.org.

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