Unified Modeling Language

When one writes a small project, documentation and standards aren’t that important. But if the number of lines becomes bigger, documentation and standards are a “must”. In the standards, one of the most used is UML.

UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. Its main objective is to maintain an order in big projects. It is focused mainly on object oriented (OO) projects (those build in C#, Java, Ruby…), but it can also work with non OO projects (VB, Javascript…).

UML allows to build:

  • Structure diagrams: class, object, component…
  • Behavior diagrams: use case, activity, state machine…
  • Interaction diagrams: communication, sequence, timing…

UML as itself is not programming. It sets up the bases of the project, but it does not implement the funcionality of it.

flickr photo by yukop https://flickr.com/photos/yukop/7548393976 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license
flickr photo by yukop https://flickr.com/photos/yukop/7548393976 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license