The Unified Modeling Language User Guide, 2nd Edition

Chapter 8

Class Diagrams

In this chapter

• Modeling simple collaborations

• Modeling a logical database schema

• Forward and reverse engineering

Class diagrams are the most common diagram found in modeling object-oriented systems. A class diagram shows a set of classes, interfaces, and collaborations and their relationships.

You use class diagrams to model the static design view of a system. For the most part, this involves modeling the vocabulary of the system, modeling collaborations, or modeling schemas. Class diagrams are also the foundation for a couple of related diagrams: component diagrams and deployment diagrams.

Class diagrams are important not only for visualizing, specifying, and documenting structural models, but also for constructing ...