UML Articles

Introduction to the Unified Modeling Language

A 5 part series introducing UML to Java developers published on www.informit.com

1. A Picture Can Save a Thousand Words: UML Class Diagrams and Java
Welcome to what I hope will be a gentle and useful introduction to UML and object modeling from a Java programmer's perspective. Although it's tempting to spend time considering the history and philosophy behind UML, let's get straight down to business and look at how UML represents classes; we can do historical and philosophical stuff as we go.
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2. Inheritance and Interfaces in Java and UML
This article considers the two 'I's of UML class diagrams: inheritance and interfaces.
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3. Just Typical: UML Stereotypes and Class Archetypes
"In this article, we start from the opposite end and look at the effect a UML mechanism has on the way we work with our code."
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4. Getting Dynamic: Java and UML Interaction Diagrams
In this article, we move on to consider another type of UML diagram: the interaction diagram.
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5. More Symbols, More Diagrams, More UML: Beyond Class and Interaction Diagrams
"...briefly consider the other types of diagrams defined in the UML specification. These diagrams may be less directly related to our Java source code than the more glamorous class and interaction diagrams, but our UML toolkit is incomplete without them." NB. <<extends>> arrows are pointing in the wrong direction in the use case diagram example in this article.
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Other UML articles

UML 2.1 is a large specification and although it fixes many of the problems people had when using previous versions of UML it is still far from perfect. I use UML all the time as it is the best general purpose modelling notation for software systems available. However, there are things about it I'd like to change and one or two of them are discussed below:

Use Case Dos and Don'ts - an Informal Survey
I asked a number of friends and colleagues to prepare me a list of their top Do's and Don'ts for using use cases. Here is the result of that survey...
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Is UML out of date?
"... Four years on and we have UML 1.4 and work is well under way on UML 2.0. But is UML still relevant in the age of J2EE and .Net? ..."
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