The Unified Modeling Language User Guide, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4

Classes

In this chapter

• Classes, attributes, operations, and responsibilities

• Modeling the vocabulary of a system

• Modeling the distribution of responsibilities in a system

• Modeling nonsoftware things

• Modeling primitive types

• Making quality abstractions

Classes are the most important building block of any object-oriented system. A class is a description of a set of objects that share the same attributes, operations, relationships, and semantics. A class implements one or more interfaces.

Advanced features of classes are discussed in Chapter 9.

You use classes to capture the vocabulary of the system you are developing. These classes may include abstractions that are part of the problem domain, as well as classes that make up an implementation. ...