Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture For Dummies

Working with UML Diagrams

The preceding section tells you which UML diagram is most appropriate to capture each view in your 4 + 1 architectural model. In this section, I show you the basics of these diagram styles.

The goal is to build a system that solves the customer's or client's problem — not to produce pretty UML diagrams.

Creating class diagrams

Class diagrams show you the static relationships between parts of your system in the logical view. They also may show a conceptual model of your system. I call these parts classes to match the name of the type of diagram, but they can be any parts or components of your system — they don't need to be the classes of an object-oriented design.

I use class diagrams to model the conceptual view of the system because they're most appropriate for an architectural view, but you also can use class diagrams to show the specification of the system or the implementation. You use these other views in later phases of system development.

When drawing a class diagram of your architecture, concentrate on the most important things. Although you may want to draw the diagram all the way down to the implementation in the parts you know best, you need to provide an overview of the key areas, instead of focusing on one particular area.

Sometimes you need ...