Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#

19. Class Diagrams

Angela Brooks

UML class diagrams allow us to denote the static contents of—and the relationships between—classes. In a class diagram, we can show the member variables and member functions of a class. We can also show whether one class inherits from another or whether it holds a reference to another. In short, we can depict all the source code dependencies between classes.

This can be valuable. It can be much easier to evaluate the dependency structure of a system from a diagram than from source code. Diagrams make certain dependency structures visible. We can see dependency cycles and determine how best to break them. We can ...