![]() Click on the image to use the object diagram as a template Get More Object Diagram Templates > Package DiagramĪs the name suggests, a package diagram shows the dependencies between different packages in a system. Because there is data available in the objects, they are used to explain complex relationships between objects. They show what a system will look like at a given time. Like class diagrams, they also show the relationship between objects but they use real-world examples. Object Diagrams, sometimes referred to as Instance diagrams are very similar to class diagrams. Click on the image to edit the deployment diagram above Get More Deployment Diagram Templates > Object Diagram Deployment diagrams are useful when your software solution is deployed across multiple machines with each having a unique configuration. Click on the image to edit the component diagram above Get More Component Diagram Templates > Deployment DiagramĪ deployment diagram shows the hardware of your system and the software in that hardware. The image below shows a component diagram. The interfaces are linked using connectors. Components communicate with each other using interfaces. These are mostly used when working with complex systems with many components. The Wikipedia article about DFDs mentions also Activity diagrams as a replacement, but that is something where I think the Wikipedia article is IMHO misleading.Get More UML Class Diagram Examples > Component DiagramĪ component diagram displays the structural relationship of components of a software system. It is not a complete replacement for data flow diagrams, but it seems it would be sufficient for your example. Today, the best existing substitution in UML is AFAIK the Information flow diagram, which was introduced some time ago in UML 2.x. StarUML (which you mentioned in a comment) seems to have them, Visio does, Dia supports them, and Draw.IO has enough generic elements to support them as well. It seems they understood the need for such diagrams way better than the UML inventors. This often gave me the impression those people have read tons of UML books, but were missing hands-on practical experience which diagrams are really useful in real-world software design, and which look only nice in theory.įortunately, several UML tool vendors provide DFDs as an extension to their standard UML diagrams. I have also seen people arguing with strange excuses why data flow diagrams are not part of UML. Nothing could actually be farther from the reality. They got the impression doing "something wrong", or maybe suboptimal "object oriented design". DFDs scale well to several layers of abstraction, they can be defined with a clear and strict semantics, and they can be even used for model driven approaches and code generation.īut since this diagram type was missing in UML, I have seen several people hesitating to use DFDs. Data flow diagrams are essential for modeling any kind of system which contains data processing components, with some input data, some processing and some output data (and disclaimer: these were >95% of the systems I had to deal with over the last 30 years). UML was lacking data flow diagrams for decades (which was - in my eyes - probably the biggest single mistake the UML designers ever made). I have also no idea if there is any tool other than some general diagramming tools like Visio or Dia that supports visual extension of UML, theoretically granted by profiles. I am not sure if StarUML supports ports and if you can stereotype them there. The other option is to use Profiles to extend the UML and, actually still by stereotyping, change its visualisation to have a small arrow inside indicating data flow. One is to use stereotypes for ports, marking them as > or > respectively. First of all, you should depict the components with ports (shown as small rectangles, from which the interface lines protrude rather than coming directly from the component itself). If you still insist on showing the data flow direction on the same diagram, there are two related possibilities. I would go for a sequence diagram (probably a few of them), however some other behaviour diagrams might do as well. To show the data flow, that is a dynamic (behavioural) part of your system you should use some other diagram(s). The only information about the direction of data flow that can be read from it is who actually initiates the communication but does not depict the direction of the data flow. The Components Diagram is a static view of the system. This is usually happening when you try to indicate the whole model on just one diagram. The root of many problems is trying to show information on a diagram that is not intended to use it this way.
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