CHAPTER 21

Customizing UML Using Profiles

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In This Chapter

  • Understanding profiles
  • Defining profiles
  • Modeling profiles

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UML specifies the notation and underlying semantics to model business systems. It is a broad and detailed specification, and it satisfies the needs of most general modelers. But the UML specification is not broad or detailed enough to encompass all of the modeling aspects for every particular programming platform or modeling domain.

To satisfy these needs, UML can be extended. The UML metamodel is extended with three basic devices: stereotypes, tagged values, and constraints. When you group a set of these extensions to model a specific platform or domain, you create a profile.

The UML specification details how to build a profile. It also provides example profiles. Users and modeling tool vendors may create their own profiles. In addition, the OMG has adopted a number of standard profiles for specific platforms and domains of modeling, and is in the process of adopting more. Many of these offer both a lightweight UML profile and an alternative MOF-based metamodel extension.

In this chapter, we examine profiles—what they contain, how they are built, and how they are used. We also briefly summarize some of the profiles that have either been adopted by the OMG, or ...

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