The Unified Modeling Language User Guide SECOND EDITION [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 10. Advanced Relationships

In this chapter

• Advanced dependency, generalization, association, realization, and refinement relationships

• Modeling webs of relationships

• Creating webs of relationships

When you model the things that form the vocabulary of your system, you must also model how those things stand in relationship to one another. Relationships can be complex, however. Visualizing, specifying, constructing, and documenting webs of relationships require a number of advanced features.

Dependencies, generalizations, and associations are the three most important relational building blocks of the UML. These relationships have a number of properties beyond those described in the previous part. You can also model multiple inheritance, navigation, composition, refinement, and other characteristics. Using a fourth kind of relationshiprealizationyou can model the connection between an interface and a class or component, or between a use case and a collaboration. In the UML, you can model the semantics of relationships to any degree of formality.

Managing complex webs of relationships requires that you use the right relationships at the level of detail so that you neither under- nor over-engineer your system.