Modelling in Colour

First used on a major Java software development project in Singapore in 1997, Peter Coad, and his co-authors, Eric Lefebvre, and Jeff De Luca, introduced the modelling in colour technique in their book, Java Modeling in Color with UML, published in 1999.

• An Introduction to Modelling in Colour
  Modelling in Colour is a set of patterns and strategies that can help produce better object-oriented analysis and design models
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• The Moment-Interval Class Archetype
  The Moment-Interval class archetype is one of four class archetypes in the modelling in colour technique. It models a recognised moment in time or interval of time that we need to work with and track for business or legal reasons.
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• The Role Class Archetype
  The Role Class Archetype is category of classes found in modelling in colour, a set of patterns and strategies that can help produce better object-oriented analysis and design models
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• The Party, Place, Thing Class Archetype
  Parties, places, and things are the main role-players in which we are interested. These are the individual people, organizations of various kinds ...
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• Description Class Archetype
  In color modeling, all significant Problem Domain classes belong to one of four class archetypes. One of the four class archetypes is the blue Description archetype. This is used to represent objects that might appear as entries in some sort of catalog.
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• Typical Attributes, Operations, Associations for Moment-Intervals"
  Like all the class archetypes, much of the usefulness of the Moment-Interval class archetype in reviewing and building object models is due to its typical responsibilities, and the lists of typical attributes, operations and associations that represent those responsibilities.
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• Typical attributes, operations and associations of the Role class archetype
  Like all the class archetypes, much of the usefulness of the Role class archetype in reviewing and building object models is due to its typical responsibilities, and the lists of typical attributes, operations and associations that represent those responsibilities.
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• Typical attributes, operations and associations of the Party, Place, Thing class archetype
  Modelling in Colour is a set of patterns and strategies that can help produce better object-oriented analysis and design models
  Read the full article...
  
  
• Typical attributes, operations and associations of the Description class archetype
  Like all the class archetypes, much of the usefulness of the Description class archetype in reviewing and building object models is due to its typical responsibilities, and the lists of typical attributes, operations and associations that represent those responsibilities.
  Read the full article...
  
  
• Model Archetypes
  To fulfil their typical responsibilities classes of a particular class archetype need to collaborate with other classes of either the same archetype or of another archetype. This means that their are typical associations between classes that belong to the class archetypes and archetypal model shapes as a result.
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• Historic Values
  In business systems it is often necessary to remember the values of objects at the time a business transaction took place. For example, the price of a product may change over time and it may be necessary to remember the price used in a sale of the product. There are two fundamentally different ways of satisfying this requirement and any number of variations between the two extremes.
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• Moment-Intervals and the State Pattern
  One of the typical responsibilities of a Moment-Interval is to remember which of a number of states or modes a Moment-Interval is in currently. When these states model a complex life-cycle the end result often has a number of similarities to the Gang of Four State design pattern.
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• Accelerated Problem Domain Analysis
  Domain object models help developers and analysts and customers come to a shared understanding of the domain of a software system or component. Using the 'modeling in color' technique in a set of workshop-style sessions is the best way I know to do this.
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• Class Archetypes and the Unified Modeling Language (UML)
  UML is the most popular industry standard for representing object-oriented analysis and design ideas in graphical form. Therefore, if we are building problem domain object models and want to use class arechtypes, it is highly likely we will want a way to indicate the class archetype of a class in UML...
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• Colour Coding Class Archetypes
  Although the stereotype tag is a convenient UML mechanism for indicating the archetype of a class, it does hide some very important meaning in a rather plain and simple text label ... Fortunately the UML standard does rather begrudgingly allow us an alternative: colour.
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• From UML Association to the Domain Neutral Component
  Karl Frank, a colleague until recently at both TogetherSoft and Borland, and I were in Denver, USA, giving a modelling in colour workshop for a client. One evening Karl asked me what if any relationship I thought there was between roles in the Domain Neutral Component (DNC) and role labels on a UML association. The subsequent discussion led to the following train of thought.
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• Party Time: Modeling Legal Id's
  This article examines the properties and operations suggested by one of Peter Coad's four class archetypes, the Party, Place, Thing archetype. We previously considered some of the issues and challenges of modeling party names. We recognized that names do not necessarily uniquely identify people. In this issue we look at legal or registered identity numbers, and some of the other ways in which organizations try to address this concern.
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• Party Time: Modeling Party Names
  People! They make things so complicated! On bad days it can seem like the only thing more frustrating than people, are the organizations that they have created or for which they work. People and their organizations do not fit comfortably into highly structured, logical, organized software systems. Producing software that models people and organizations flexibly and efficiently is a challenge. Designing a general-purpose, reusable component to do so is even more challenging.
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• Reference Number Attributes
  This article examines reference number attributes in detail, examining the similarities and differences betweendiffernt kinds and identifying some strategies to use when modeling and implementing them.
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• Using the Domain Neutral Component
  We apply Peter Coad's Domain Neutral Component to a simple but typical modeling example. I recently worked with a group that was struggling a little with applying the Domain Neutral Component to their object model. This example helped clarify some of the design trade offs involved.
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• The Example Teaches
  If you are having trouble visualizing whether a class diagram meets the business needs, ask the domain experts to provide a concrete example that you can walk through with them.
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• Typical Responsibilities in Modelling in Colour
  For each class archetype we can build up a list of typical responsibilities. Once we have these lists we can use them as checklists for responsibilities of classes in our object models.
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• Modelling User Roles
  Here are five strategies to consider when modeling employee and user roles.
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