A UML class diagram is a visual tool that represents the structure of a system by showing its classes, attributes, methods, and the relationships between them. It helps everyone involved in a project—like developers and designers—understand how the system is organized and how its components interact.
Class diagrams are a type of UML Unified Modeling Language diagram used in software engineering to visually represent the structure and relationships of classes within a system i.
In these diagrams, classes are depicted as boxes, each containing three compartments for the class name, attributes, and methods. Lines connecting classes illustrate associations, showing relationships such as one-to-one or one-to-many.
They are a fundamental tool in object-oriented design and play a crucial role in the software development lifecycle. In object-oriented programming OOP , a class is a blueprint or template for creating objects. Objects are instances of classes, and each class defines a set of attributes data members and methods functions or procedures that the objects created from that class will possess.
The attributes represent the characteristics or properties of the object, while the methods define the behaviors or actions that the object can perform. In class diagrams, parameter directionality refers to the indication of the flow of information between classes through method parameters.
