RE: (ROSE) would anyone give me an detailed explaination of association

[Van Epps, Cindy]

Hi Daniel, Refer to the UML Users Guide by Booch, Rumbaugh, and Jacobson, page 147.  Association class is considered an ad vanced concept in UML.  It allows you to specify properties of an association.  Consider the example of an astronaut who flies on space shuttle flights.  It is a many-to-many relationship.  If I need to keep a health record for a particular astronaut for a particular flight, I will represent that as an association class.  This allows my model to clarify the fact that the health record is associated with a particular instance of the relationship between astronaut and flight.  I will use this in analysis, but will have to refactor it for design, since (to my knowledge) there are no languages which support implementation of this concept directly.  The notation allows me to represent an abstraction of the concept in analysis rather than lose the concept because of the implementation of it. Hope this helps, cve Cindy VanEpps Software Engineering Specialist Rational Software [EMAIL PROTECTED] 281.648.7996 http://www.rational.com ��Complexity is just a disarrangement of simplicities.�� -----Original Message----- From: daniel wang [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000 9:40 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: (ROSE) would anyone give me an detailed explaination of association hi :     i don't really understand the association class in uml. when i should make use of them? best regards   daniel