Chapter 3 Building Structural Diagrams


Class Diagram Basics

A class diagram is a UML diagram that contains classes, interfaces, packages, and their relationships, and that provides a logical view of all, or part of a software system.

You build a class diagram to simplify the interaction of objects in the system you are modeling. Class diagrams express the static structure of a system in terms of classes and relationships between those classes. A class describes a set of objects, and an association describes a set of links; objects are class instances, and links are association instances.

A class diagram does not express anything specific about the links of a given object, but it describes, in an abstract way, the potential link from an object to other objects.

The following example shows the process of product order and shipment in a class diagram.


 


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