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UML Views and UML Diagrams

This article is about the UML views and the UML Diagrams. In this article, we will briefly study the different views that the Unified Modelling Language (UML) aims to capture. We will also study the different UML diagrams that are made to represent the Software model and which are implemented through these views?
Submitted by Monika Sharma, on October 18, 2019

There are five different views that the UML aims to visualize through different modeling diagrams. These five views are:

1. User's View
2. Structural Views
3. Behavioral Views
4. Environmental View
5. Implementation View

Now, these views just provide the thinking methodology and expectations (that people have formed the software) of different groups of people. However, we still need to diagrammatically document the system requirements, and this is done through 9 different types of UML diagrams. These diagrams are divided into different categories. These categories are nothing else but these views that we mentioned earlier.

The different software diagrams according to the views they implement are:

1) User's view

This contains the diagrams in which the user's part of interaction with the software is defined. No internal working of the software is defined in this model. The diagrams contained in this view are:

• Use case Diagram

2) Structural view

In the structural view, only the structure of the model is explained. This gives an estimate of what the software consists of. However, internal working is still not defined in this model. The diagram that this view includes are:

• Class Diagrams
• Object Diagrams

3) Behavioral view

The behavioral view contains the diagrams which explain the behavior of the software. These diagrams are:

• Sequence Diagram
• Collaboration Diagram
• State chart Diagram
• Activity Diagram

4) Environmental view

The environmental view contains the diagram which explains the after deployment behavior of the software model. This diagram usually explains the user interactions and software effects on the system. The diagrams that the environmental model contain are:

• Deployment diagram

5) Implementation view

The implementation view consists of the diagrams which represent the implementation part of the software. This view is related to the developer’s views. This is the only view in which the internal workflow of the software is defined. The diagram that this view contains is as follows:

• Component Diagram

The following diagram well explains the distribution of these 9 software diagrams according to the five mentioned views: