I have been trying to learn the basics of UML for the past couple days
or so by assembling a class diagram for a hypothetical Contact
Manager--although it may not stay hypothetical if I can learn this
properly ;). Unfortunately I am experiencing a bit of confusion in
regards to properly communicating class hierarchy between associated /
aggregated classes.
Here is the (very simple) diagram that I made thus-far:
http://www.aerosdesign.com/jsorensen/store/uml/uml_diag_a.jpg
Basically, I have three classes -- the Account class being a
composition of the Contact and Address classes. (I think)
Here is my question:
When I say that class X is a "composition" of class Y and class Z, is
this because X has properties that are defined AS _TYPE_ Y and Z?
My logic to place the Contact class and the Address class as composing
elements of the Account class is simply because the Contact class have
defined properties OF TYPE Contact and Address. Is this correct?
If this is the case, I will be glad to hear that I am doing things
correctly. However, a new source of confusion then emerges for me;
say, for instance that I wanted to have an Array of contacts for any
given account as opposed to just one. I then replace
accContact:Contact with accContacts:Array.
Here is the updated diagram:
http://www.aerosdesign.com/jsorensen/store/uml/uml_diag_b.jpg
The relationship between the Contact class and the Account class is no
longer explicit--but I still want to convey that the accContacts array
will be populated with instances of "Contact". How do I now
communicate this relationship? Would this be an "association" now?
See this diagram if you are confused:
http://www.aerosdesign.com/jsorensen/store/uml/uml_diag_comment.jpg
A sincere thank you to anyone who took the time to read and attempt to
understand my post; I apologize if this is slightly outside the scope
of normal list discussion. If this is not an appropriate place to ask
this sort of question, I would be very happy to hear about an active
UML mailing list or equivalent alternative. :)
Thanks for any assistance,
Joseph
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