Software Design (UML)

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What is UML?

UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. This language is used to create various aspects of an object oriented software design. UML offers a standard way to visualize a system's architectural blueprints. The notations used by this modeling language have evolved from the work of Grady Booch, James Rumbaugh, Ivar Jacobson and the Rational Software Corporation. There are various types of UML diagrams that depict the various aspects of software design. We will descibe a few of these diagrams that form the basis of object oriented designs. The scope of this article is limited to providing a brief overview of the design process we follow.

Class Diagrams
A class diagram is the pictorial representation of a class, its attributes and its methods. Class is the abstraction of entities with common characteristics and forms the basis of an object. We make sure that we have analysed the proposed system to a level where we can create all such abstractions and define their relationship in detailed class diagrams.

Sequence Diagrams
Sequence diagrams describe the interaction of messages between the various processes over time. A sequence diagram shows, as parallel vertical lines, different processes or objects that live simultaneously, and, as horizontal arrows, the messages exchanged between them, in the order in which they occur. This allows the specification of simple runtime scenarios in a graphical manner. We create these diagrams to design the interaction of objects and processes for the proposed system.

Collaboration Diagrams
A collaboration diagram describes interactions among objects in terms of sequenced messages. Collaboration diagrams represent a combination of information taken from class, sequence, and use case diagrams describing both the static structure and dynamic behavior of a system.

Component Diagrams
A component diagram describes the organization of the physical components in a system. Components are wired together by using an assembly connector to connect the required interface of one component with the provided interface of another component. Components diagrams can be used to illustrate the structure of arbitrarily complex systems.

Database Diagrams
Database diagrams  describe the structure of various tables in the database and their relationships in terms of one to one, one to many, many to many and many to one. These diagrams are very useful in because they give us a way to visualize all the data in the system and organize them in an efficient data model. This also helps with writing optimized queries and creating proper indexes to maximize performance.