Unified Modeling Language

Abstract

Mature engineering disciplines are generally characterized by accepted methodical standards for describing all relevant artifacts of their subject matter. Such standards not only enable practitioners to collaborate, but they also contribute to the development of the whole discipline. In 1994, Grady Booch, Jim Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson joined together to unify the plethora of existing object-oriented systems engineering approaches at semantic and notation level (Booch, 2002; Fowler, 2004; Rumbaugh, Jacobson, & Booch, 1998). Their effort led to the Unified Modeling Language (UML), a well-known, general-purpose, tool-supported, process-independent, and industry-standardized modeling language for visualizing, describing, specifying, and documenting systems artifacts. Table 1 depicts the origin and descent of UML.