UML 2.0 in a Nutshell

Chapter 2. Class Diagrams

Class diagrams are one of the most fundamental diagram types in UML. They are used to capture the static relationships of your software; in other words, how things are put together.

When writing software you are constantly making design decisions: what classes hold references to other classes, which class "owns" some other class, and so on. Class diagrams provide a way to capture this "physical" structure of a system.

Classes

A class represents a group of things that have common state and behavior. You can think of a class as a blueprint for an object in an object-oriented system. In UML speak, a class is a kind of classifier. For example, Volkswagen, Toyota, and Ford are all cars, so you can represent them using a class named Car. Each specific type of car is an instance of that class, or an object. A class may represent a tangible and concrete concept, such as an invoice; it may be abstract, such as a document or a vehicle (as opposed to an invoice, or a motorcycle greater than 1000 cc), or it may represent an intangible concept such as a high-risk investment strategy.

You represent a class with a rectangular box divided into compartments. A compartment is simply an area in the rectangle to write information. The first compartment holds the name of the class, the second holds attributes (see "Attributes"), and the third is used for operations (see "Operations"). You can hide any compartment of the class if that increases the readability of your ...