C++ All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 3

Structuring Your Classes with UML

In This Chapter

Drawing classes in UML

Drawing inheritance and other relationships

Building components with UML

Deploying the software

When you use the Unified Modeling Language (UML) to design software, your diagrams have two aspects: One is static, and the other is dynamic. The static diagrams represent the things that do not change while your application is running. For example, a class does not change while the application is running. When you write the code, you write the class name, member variables, and member functions, and you notate what is private, protected, and public. After you compile the application, this information does not change; it remains static. This is in contrast to the information you represent in the dynamic diagrams, where the information can change. Dynamic diagrams include things like object creation and deletion as well as object collaborations (objects working together, or collaborating, conspiring, plotting, and scheming, like good little classes).

In this chapter, we discuss the three types of static diagrams: ...