History of Uml

Physics 120

History of UML

An important part of any project is understanding customer requirements. This is where UML comes into play. UML, or Unified Modeling Language, was created by Grady Booch, Jim Rumbaugh and Ivar Jacobson in late 1994. In 1997, the OMG(Object Management Group) developed UML as a common architectural framework for modeling object-oriented systems and applications. UML was derived from a couple of competing approaches to organize and structure the software development phase. The three most popular techniques were the Object-Modeling Technique, the Booch Method and Object-Oriented Software Engineering. The OMG described the Unified Modeling language as “a language representing unified best engineering practices for specifying , visualizing, constructing and documenting the elements of business modeling, software and even non-software systems”(OMG).

In the mid-1990s, Jim Rumbaugh was hired by Rational Software in order to join Grady Booch to create version 0.8 of what was then known as the Unified Method(Maksimchuk). In 1995, Ivar Jacobson joined the duo at Rational Software. United, they developed version 0.9 of the Unified Method. In 1997, The Unified Method was renamed as the Unified Modeling Language once version 1.0 was developed. OMG has since taken over the UML development and the final version of 2.0 was approved in 2004(Maksimchuk).

In UML 2.0, there are thirteen types of diagrams broken down into three categories: Structure Diagrams, Behavior Diagrams and Interaction Diagrams(Haughey). Structure diagrams emphasize what things must be in the system being modeled. Structure diagrams include

diagrams such as the Class diagram and Object diagram. Behavior diagrams focuses on what must happen in the system modeled. It includes diagrams such as Use Case diagrams and Activity Diagrams. Interaction diagrams contains a subset of behavior diagrams that emphasizes the flow of control and data among the things in the system being...