Chapter 10. Creating Object Models with UML

I believe very strongly that learning the fundamental OO concepts should come before learning any specific modeling tools. Thus, the placement of this chapter was somewhat problematic . In many ways, this chapter could go first, because UML diagrams are present throughout the book, including Chapter 1. Finally, it was decided to place this chapter at the end of the "conceptual" chapters, which I consider Chapters 1 “9. The remaining chapters cover more application issues rather than concepts.

This chapter is a brief overview of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) notation used in this book. It is not a comprehensive tutorial on UML because that would require an entire book unto itself, and there are many such books. For several good sources, see the references at the end of this chapter. Because this book deals with fundamentals, the UML that is used only scratches the surface of what UML actually offers.

In this book, the UML notation we are concerned with concerns modeling object-oriented systems or, as I like to call it, object-modeling. This notation includes object-models and class diagrams. Many components of UML are not used in this book. For example, because this book is concerned with object-models, UML constructs such as State Chart Diagrams and Activity Diagrams are not covered.

Each of those topics could warrant a complete chapter or more. Again, the purpose of this chapter is to provide a quick overview of object models and class diagrams so that if you are unfamiliar with class diagrams, you can pick up the basics quickly, and the examples in the book will be more meaningful.