UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language, Third Edition

Chapter 6. Object Diagrams

An object diagram is a snapshot of the objects in a system at a point in time. Because it shows instances rather than classes, an object diagram is often called an instance diagram.

You can use an object diagram to show an example configuration of objects. (See Figure 6.1, which shows a set of classes, and Figure 6.2, which shows an associated set of objects.) This latter use is very useful when the possible connections between objects are complicated.

Figure 6.1. Class diagram of Party composition structure

Figure 6.2. Object ...