Java™ Design: Objects, UML, and Process

3.5. Introduction to Diagrams

These sample diagrams provide illustrations of how we interpret various relationships on individual diagrams. We also discuss how these different diagrams can be used in conjunction with each other to further enhance communication. Our example here depicts the Java event-handling mechanism used within the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT). When developing Java applications, it's quite common to use a pattern similar to that of AWT to handle events within our application. In fact, this event-handling mechanism within Java is an implementation of the observer [GOF95] and command design pattern [GOF95].

3.5.1. Sequence Diagram

The rectangles at the top of our sequence diagram in Figure 3.4 denote objects. Objects have ...