Common Mechanisms of UML

UML Diagrams 

• Use case diagram
• Class diagrams
• Interaction diagram
• State diagram
• Activity diagram
• Component diagram
• Deployment diagram

Use case diagram 

• Displays the relationship among actors and use cases

Class diagram 

• It models both class structure and contents by making use of design elements such as 

Interaction diagrams

Sequence diagram 

• It displays the time sequence of the objects participating in the interaction 
• The diagram has a vertical dimension which represents time and a horizontal dimension which represents different objects 

Collaboration diagram 

• It displays an interaction organized around the objects and their links to one another 
• The sequence of messages is represented in terms of numbers 

State diagram 

• It displays the sequences of states that an object of an interaction goes through during its life in response to received stimuli, together with its responses and actions. 

Activity diagram 

• It displays a special state diagram in which almost all the states are action states and most of the transitions are triggered by completion of the actions in the source states 
• This diagram focuses on flows driven by internal processing 

Component diagram 

• It displays the high level packaged structure of the code 
• It also shows the dependencies among different components, which include 
• ⃝source code components 
• ⃝binary code components, and 
• ⃝executable components 
• Some components exist at compile time, at link time, at runtimes as well; more than one time 

Deployment Diagram 

• It displays the configuration of 
• elements and software components involved in the runtime processing 
• ⃝processes 
• ⃝objects that live on them 
• Software component instances represent runtime manifestations of code units