UMLR — Simplify by Making UML More Consistent: Apply class and composite structure diagram rules to behavior modeling

Simplify by Making UML More Consistent: Apply class and composite structure diagram rules to behavior modeling.

One problem with UML now is that the ability to simplify by applying more consistency is not taken advantage of. By being consistent – eliminating special cases, the specification becomes smaller, the modelers have to learn less, the tools can reuse code, and UML becomes easier to understand and use.

As behaviors (e.g., operations, activities) are classifiers, there is no good reason why the class and composite structure diagrams cannot be used to model them. This would allow for diagrams showing inheritance, composition, associations, dependencies, etc. While this may not be “OO”, it would support functional decomposition/programming approaches, simplify, and make more regular the specification. See the RFI response ad/2009-08-05.