4 May 2007
Introduction to UML
Posted by Mikhail Esteves under: General .
When you’re designing and developing new software systems, it is often hard to see how all the pieces are suppose to fit together. Unified Modeling Language (UML) is one tool that allow developers and architects to ease the process and create a big picture before committing to a particular technology.
UML is simply a language, as its name suggests. It can be used, along with a working development methodology, to aid in designing and describing a software system. The process is called modeling. UML allows architects, developers, management, testers, designers, and users to come together and create a software model in an abstract fashion. This abstraction is what makes software modeling useful, as the people involved in creating software come from different backgrounds and have different skills; the model, described in UML, gives them all a common picture of the system. This common picture provides project participants with a base of understanding; it produces a nomenclature for the project, a viable way to group tasks and set deadlines, and a way to have meaningful discussions between contributors without becoming lost in the details.