UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language, Third Edition

Chapter 17. Timing Diagrams

After leaving secondary school, I started out in electronic engineering before I switched into computing. So I feel a certain anguished familiarity when I see the UML define timing diagrams as one of its standard diagrams. Timing diagrams have been around in electronic engineering for a long time and never seemed to need the UML’s help to define their meaning. But since they are in the UML, they deserve a brief mention.

Timing diagrams are another form of interaction diagram, where the focus is on timing constraints: either for a single object or, more usefully, for a bunch of objects. Let’s take a simple scenario based on the pump and hotplate for a coffee pot. Let’s imagine a rule that says that at least 10 seconds ...