About UML
UML is a standard maintained by the Object Management Group. UML has its own terminology that is independent of implementation languages such as Java and C#. UML calls pieces of information stored in instances of a class attributes rather than variables. UML calls a class's encapsulations of behavior operations, rather than functions, procedures, methods, or subroutines.
.NET's concept of properties do not directly match anything in UML. If a class has a property named Color, you would draw it in a UML diagram with operations named GetColor and SetColor.
Classes
UML uses a few different kinds of diagrams. This article will focus on class diagrams. A class diagram is a diagram that shows classes, interfaces, objects, and their relationships. The most basic element of a class diagram is a class. Figure 1 shows many of the features that a class can have in a class diagram.
Figure 1: An Example of a Class
Classes are drawn as rectangles. The rectangles may be divided into two or three compartments. The class rectangle shown in Figure 1 has three compartments. The top compartment contains the class's name. The middle compartment lists the class's attributes. The bottom compartment lists the class's operations.
The symbols that precede each attribute and operation are visibility indicators. The possible visibility indicators and their meanings are as follows:
Symbol | Name | Description | +Public
Unrestricted access
#Protected
Access only by the containing class or derived types (children)
-Private
Access restricted to the containing class
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