Developing UML Diagrams

This is a curated collection of resources for becoming familiar with UML diagrams. In particular with Use Case Diagrams, Class Diagrams and Sequence diagrams.

In 1997 UML was adopted as a standard by the Object Management Group (OMG), and has been managed by this organization ever since. In 2005 UML was also published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as an approved ISO standard.

Use Cases, Class and Activity Diagrams are not the only diagram of UML but they are the most commonly used in both Business and Computer Science domains.

UML Diagrams: a mini-tutorial

Let’s start with a recap of what they are (courtesy of Lucidchart ) :

Use Cases Diagram:

Class Diagrams:

Sequence Diagrams:

Tools for writing UML Diagrams

Argo UML  

http://argouml.tigris.org/

Free and Open source. Is a stand alone java based application that you have to install in your computer.

ECLIPSE Plug-in

https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/uml-designer

Use this tool only if you are familiar with Eclipse. It is an advanced tool and also support reverse engineering of code. So, in the case where you have just to design functionalities is a bit of an overkill.

Rational Rose

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Rational_Rose_XDE

This tool (developed IBM) is extremely sophisticated and support automatic deployment of models to productions.

Web based resources for drawing UML:

• https://www.lucidchart.com
• https://cawemo.com
• https://about.draw.io

Simple to use and 100% web based. The free license should cover the majority of your basic needs. It is not the only one however their basic license is one of the most comprehensive.

Microsoft Visio

https://products.office.com/en/visio/flowchart-software

Is is a comprehensive tool for all possible designs and support UML as well. Students should have a free or almost free license

Example of UML diagrams and case studies

Here you can find a curated list of examples of various diagrams:

https://www.uml-diagrams.org/index-examples.html

There you will find a set of simple but complete use cases that could help you in familiarizing with the language. Additional resources are also available at tutorial point:

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/uml/index.htm