In practice: UML software architecture and design description

TLDR

UML has become the de facto modeling language for software development, offering a standardized, expressive notation with 13 diagram types, domain‑specific extensions, and tool support for code generation and reverse engineering. This study investigates UML usage and model quality in real‑world projects, rather than evaluating the language’s theoretical adequacy.

Abstract

The Unified Modeling Language has attracted many organizations and practitioners. UML is now the de facto modeling language for software development. Several features account for its popularity: it's a standardized notation, rich in expressivity; UML 2.0 provides 13 diagram types that enable modeling several different views and abstraction levels. Furthermore, UML supports domain-specific extensions using stereotypes and tagged values. Finally, several case tools integrate UML modeling with other tasks such as generating code and reverse-engineering models from code. Our study focused on UML use and model quality in actual projects rather than on its adequacy as a notation or language.