The UML Is More Than Boxes and Lines

  • Authors:
  • Yvan Labiche

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Software Quality Engineering Laboratory, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada ON K1S5B6

  • Venue:
  • Models in Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is now the de-facto standard for the analysis and design of object-oriented software systems. There is a general consensus among researchers and practitioners that the UML could have a stronger semantic content. However, even the semantics of the UML, as described for example as well-formedness rules in the UML standard documentation, is not very well-known to many practitioners. As a result, practitioners often perceive the UML merely as a graphic tool. This paper discusses the apprenticeship of the UML semantics and presents a pedagogical method to help students overcome their limited view of the UML language as merely a set of annotated boxes and lines and to allow them to discover UML semantics.