These tools offer guidance and ensure that all parts of a system work as intended in relation to all the other parts. They show the hierarchy of components or modules and how they connect and interact with each other. These are used to help you visualize the various structures that make up a system, like a database or an application. Structural diagrams represent the static structure of software or a system, and they also show different levels of abstraction and implementation. Let’s take a closer look: Structural diagrams The goal is for UML to visually express diagrams that are easy for everyone to understand. That means each layout requires a different focus and level of detail. These variations exist to represent the numerous types of scenarios and diagrams that different types of people use.įrom customers and project managers to technical authors, designers, analysts, coders, and QA, testers, each role will utilize a specific diagram to suits their needs. There are two major types of UML diagrams: structure diagrams and behavioral diagrams (and within those categories lie multiple others).

Helps resolve persistent architectural problems.Automates the production of software and processes.Today, UML is still the standard go-to notation for developers, as well as project managers, business owners, tech entrepreneurs and professionals across industries. UML first came on the scene back in the 1990s thanks to three software engineers-Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh-because they wanted to develop a less chaotic way to represent increasingly complex software development, while also separating methodology from process. UML helps showcase potential errors in application structures, system behavior and other business processes. Unified Modeling Language (UML) plays a big role in software development, but also in non-software systems throughout many industries, as it’s a way to visually show the behavior and structure of a system or a process.

Event sequence diagram example