UML 2.0 in a Nutshell

UML Profiles

UML profiles combine the concepts of stereotypes, tagged values, and constraints to provide a coherent and concise dialect of UML for a specific family of applications. To make much use of a profile, some tooling must be provided. The application model drives code or application generation, so you have little or no control over the stereotypes, tagged values, or constraints comprising the profile. This section discusses the use of existing profiles (as opposed to defining your own).

Figure 11-6 depicts a partial UML profile defining a stereotype with its associated tagged values and a couple of constraints, as you might receive in a vendor's documentation. The profile extends classes with a stereotyped class, «EJBEntityBean». It extends attributes with two stereotyped attributes: «EJBPrimaryKey» and «EJBCmpField». It declares the respective tagged values for the stereotyped classes and attributes, and it declares the enumeration, TransactionIsolationLevel, to define the allowable values for the TransactionAttribute tagged value. The profile also adds the constraints that «EJBEntityBean» classes must have attributes of type «EJBCmpField» and «EJBPrimaryKey». Furthermore, attributes having these stereotypes can exist only in an «EJBEntityBean» class. From your point of view, the profile, along with its constituent stereotypes and tagged values, is read-only because it tells what the third-party tool expects in order to do its job.

Figure 11-6. A partial specification ...