UML Strickes Back

If you haven’t seen my previuos entry about introduction of UML you should probably look it up if your not a pro at this, you can check it out on this link.

As I previously talk (write), about UML you may have seen and understand about how and why UML are for on my past entry I will try to make easier for you process of doing it, yes we will start step by step to complete our beautiful system and be part of this community that many call UML-heads, just kidding no one call it like that just me. Well let’s continue.

First, we will start about the aspect or characteristics. These are very important. And as I previously show you these are mainly conform of two parts. Entities and relationships. As an object obviously entities contain much more that it seems and it can be described with his attributes (variables) and actions (methods).

The entities can be described as an object, can be physical or abstract. Consider as an object that reply on transaction, so either can be a person or an abstract concept, for example:

In this basic example we got a customer, that represent a simple person, where normally you assume that belong to the system itself. As in real life we got a name in here every customer has a customer ID to differentiate one from another, and of course the rest of the attributes can be the same because just describe one specific instance.

The relationships are literal links with entities that can be describe as ownership or being, so in the previous example can be explain as a costumer. The costumer cannot be an appointment so it seems more probable that the costumer can have none or many appointments, that is the meaning of those numbers, so it is read from the opposite side, therefore the appointment can be own by one and only one because is unique for one customer. In conclusion UML is can be very practical when it come to plan a system or explain it to someone that not necesarilly have to know about databases or any technical.