Perspectives

Before I begin describing class diagrams, I would like to bring out an important subtlety in the way people use them. This subtlety is usually undocumented but has an impact on the way you should interpret a diagram, for it very much concerns what it is you are describing with a model.

Following the lead of Steve Cook and John Daniels (1994), I say that there are three perspectives you can use in drawing class diagrams— or indeed any model, but this breakdown is most noticeable in connection with class diagrams.

  • Conceptual. If you take the conceptual perspective, you draw a diagram that represents the concepts in the domain under study. These concepts will naturally relate to the classes that implement them, but there is often no ...

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