Stereotypes
Stereotypes are the core extension mechanism of the UML. If you find that you need a modeling construct that isn't in the UML but is similar to something that is, you treat your construct as a stereotype of the UML construct.
An example of this is the interface. A UML interface is a class that has only public operations with no method bodies or attributes. This corresponds to interfaces in Java, COM, and CORBA. Since it's a special kind of class, it is defined as a stereotype of class. (See "Interfaces and Abstract Classes" on page 90 for more about interfaces.)
Stereotypes are usually shown in text between guillemets (for example, «interface»), but you can also show them by defining an icon for the stereotype.
Many extensions to ...
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