Increasing comprehensibility of object models: making the roles of attributes explicit in UML diagrams

Authors:
Pauli Byckling;Petri Gerdt;Ludwik Kuzniarz;Jorma Sajaniemi
Affiliations:
University of Joensuu, Department of Computer Science and Statistics, Joensuu, Finland;University of Joensuu, Department of Computer Science and Statistics, Joensuu, Finland;Blekinge Institute of Technology, Department of Software Engineering, Ronneby, Sweden;University of Joensuu, Department of Computer Science and Statistics, Joensuu, Finland
Venue:
Nordic Journal of Computing - Selected papers of the fourth nordic workshop on UML and software modelling (NWUML'06), June 12-14, 2006
Year:
2006

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Abstract

UML allows to produce and maintain object-oriented models of systems from different perspectives and view points using the notion of a diagram. This paper describes how the comprehensibility of models can be increased by augmenting some UML diagrams with additional information about the behavior of attributes. A recent notion of "roles of variables" is used to describe various behaviors. The increased comprehensibility of two diagram types, class diagrams and sequence diagrams, is demonstrated by examples where the added role information reveals the behavior of attributes in a compact manner.