Professional C++, 5th Edition

DIntroduction to UML

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the industry standard for diagrams visualizing class hierarchies, subsystem interactions, sequence diagrams, and so on. This book uses UML for its class diagrams. Explaining the entire UML standard warrants a book in itself, so this appendix is just a brief introduction to only those aspects of UML that are used throughout this book. There are different versions of the UML standard. This book uses UML 2.

DIAGRAM TYPES

UML defines the following types of diagrams:

• Structural UML diagrams
  • Class diagram
  • Object diagram
  • Package diagram
  • Composite structure diagram
  • Component diagram
  • Deployment diagram
  • Profile diagram
• Behavioral UML diagrams
  • Use case diagram
  • Activity diagram
  • State machine diagram
  • Interaction diagram
    • Sequence diagram
    • Communication diagram
    • Timing diagram
    • Interaction overview diagram

Because this book uses only class and sequence diagrams, those are the only diagrams further discussed in this appendix.

CLASS DIAGRAMS

Class diagrams are used to visualize individual classes, and can include data members and member functions. They are also used to show the relationships between different classes.

Class Representation

A class is represented in UML as a box with a maximum of three compartments, containing the following:

• The name of the class
• The data members of the class
• The methods of the class

Figure D-1 shows an example. MyClass has two data members—one of type string, the other of type float