Software Engineering

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Unified Modeling Language

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental, modeling language in the field of software engineering, that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system.[1]

UML was originally motivated by the desire to standardize the disparate notational systems and approaches to software design developed by Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh at Rational Software in 1994–95, with further development led by them through 1996.[1]

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 the Unified Modeling Language was also published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as an approved ISO standard.[2] Since then it has been periodically revised to cover the latest revision of UML.[3]

Though well-known and widely used in education and academic papers, as of 2013 UML is little-used in industry, and most such use is informal and ad hoc.[4]

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History[edit]

History of object-oriented methods and notation

UML has been evolving since the second half of the 1990s and has its roots in the object-oriented methods developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The timeline (see image) shows the highlights of the history of object-oriented modeling methods and notation.

It is originally based on the notations of the Booch method, the Object-modeling technique (OMT) and Object-oriented software engineering (OOSE), which it has integrated into a single language.[5]

Before UML 1.x[edit]

Rational Software Corporation hired James Rumbaugh from General Electric in 1994 and after that the company became the source for two of the most popular object-oriented modeling approaches of the day:[6] Rumbaugh's Object-modeling technique (OMT) and Grady Booch's method. They were soon assisted in their efforts...