As I understand it, the white dot indicates "optional" while the black dot means "required".
If so, a Category is required while a Classified is optional.
But what does that actually mean in the database - to say that a Category is required and a Classified is optional?
If the child of the relationship (in the example above set as "classified"), is optional then the column is defined with the database as allowing null records. i.e set to NULL. This means that you can either specify no records as being linked from classified to category, or many records.
In some cases, it could mean the difference between a foreign key being allowed to be NULL or not.
In other cases it might be something you need to check via constraints or application code.
Unfortunately I'm unfamiliar with the notation used in the diagram you post so I can't tell you what it means there.
Related
In an UML class diagram:
a) Do you have to state attributes that are aggregated? Or is it enough with the arrows indicating aggregation?
b) Do I have to add "id" as an attribute or is it a given?
Thanks.
You are using a shared aggregation in the picture. That does not have any defined semantics as per UML 2.5 (see p. 110). If you need a composite aggregation the diamond must be filled. In that case the aggregated object will be deleted along with the aggregating one (the latter must assure that constraint). In your model it makes no sense. No employee aggregates a department. Even vice versa I would have doubts or at least reason for discussion.
An id is only needed if it has a business purpose (e.g. an article number). If you transform your model to a database you introduce an artificial id for technical reasons. But on an abstract business level they are not modeled.
Your models only differ in the use of attributes for associated classes. The B variant is preferred. But you need to place the attributes as role names towards the associated classes (as -department and -branch). What you have placed in the middle of the connectors is rather the association name. Badly chosen with the + in front. Naming associations is rarely needed. So get rid of that. Role names shall be placed near the class that takes the role. Also it's a good idea to use the dot-notation to show that the roles represent owned properties. Just place a small black dot near the left hand side of both (near where the role names should go).
As for the dot-notation UML 2.5 states on p. 18:
Dot notation is used to denote association end ownership, where the dot shows that the Class at the other end of the line owns the Property whose type is the Class touched by the dot. See 11.5.4 for details of Association notation and 11.5.5 for examples.
Also as JimL. commented the A-version uses associations plus attributes which introduces redundancy. This is not illegal but likely not intended and at least leads to confusion.
I have a User class that can "measure" some parameters associated to a date and input them in an application. So 1 User -> many parameters of many types associated to many dates (many measurements). The parameters types are fixed and can be both numeric or strings, e.g: weight, height, calories intake, some strings... which are represented as an enumeration.
Now my main problem is: does the fact that the parameters can be of different datatypes (numbers or strings) mean that the general parameter type has to have specialisations for the two subgroups of parameters? Or is the datatype for each type of parameter implied in the type itself? (e.g. a "weight" implies it should be a number)
How can the "Parameter" class be represented in a correct way considering that:
it can be both numerical or a string
there is also a superuser class that can add parameters for a specific user
the parameters the superuser can input are some of the ones the normal user can PLUS some other parameters exclusive to the superuser (say: fat body mass) so there is not a 1-1 correspondence
the numerical parameters have other additional attributes that can be modified by the superuser (for example: limit weight)
the superuser supposedly should be able to add "notes" for some parameters
My confusion stems from the fact that I have no background in OOP programming and i can't find any similar examples online. I just need an input towards the right direction to go to. Is the pictured diagram correct? And why it most likely isn't? The problem as of now would be how to implement the fact that the superuser can also add notes to some parameters.
Do I:
create a single parameter class with the enumeration type as attribute which automatically implies the datatype of the input e.g weight = number?
create two subclasses for each User, e.g. UserParameters and SuperUserParameters, although some parameters overlap?
leave it as is with some adjustments?
other better approach?
I'd like to propose using an improved terminology. Since your app is about (health) property measurements, I'll replace your class name "Parameter" with Measurement.
The following model should satisfy all of your requirements (except the one discussed below):
Notice that the two subclasses UserProperty and SpecialProperty simply define a partitioning of Property. They can be eliminated by adding an enumeration attribute propertyCategory to the Property class, having USER_PPROPERTY and SPECIAL_PPROPERTY as its enum literals.
The only requirement, which is not yet covered, is
the numerical parameters have other additional attributes that can be
modified by the superuser (for example: limit weight)
This needs further carification. If these "other additional attributes" form a fixed set, then they can be modeled as further attributes of the Property class.
I don't think you should do that on UML level at all. You are going into memory management/overlays. And those are implementation details you should not take care of. Rather you are dealing with HeartRate and Weight as distinct objects. They will not have a common "value", which is just some memory allocation. They are what they are and whether you need a string or a number is some property of the distinct business objects.
I have a question in UML. I'm a beginner in UML and I do not know if I can do this :
You can't. A composition means a whole/part relationship and it can only be 0*-1, 1*-1 or 0*-0..1 at most.
For more information on the subject I'd read this:
https://www.uml-diagrams.org/composition.html
EDIT: Think about what a whole/part relationship is. A bedroom is part of a house, but the same bedroom cannot belong to multiple houses. However, a house can have multiple bedrooms. This is the same kind of relationship as in the house/bedroom case.
In addition to Carlos Manuel Hernadez's answer, the multiplicity in a composition relationship is restricted in the end that touches the whole so that in the upper limit it is at the most 1 for which only the following are allowed: 0..1, 1 and 0 in cases of redefinition. The UML standard 2.5.1 on the page 122 says:
Composite aggregation is a strong form of aggregation that requires a part object be included in at most one composite object at a time. If a composite object is deleted, all of its part instances that are objects are deleted with it.
NOTE. A part object may (where otherwise allowed) be removed from a composite object before the composite object is deleted, and thus not be deleted as part of the composite object.
And on the page 207 there is an example:
The other end, as far as I know, has no restrictions so that any multiplicity is allowed (0, 1, 0..1, n, n..m, *, etc.)
With respect to the cascade elimination, this is not limited only to the composition ralationship. You can model an association without any kind of aggregation and put a constrain or an annotation on it to indicate that the existence of an object is conditioned to the existence of the other
Sorry for the bad English, my native language is Spanish
A few days ago a friend pointed out to me that I had a wrong idea of composition in UML. She was completely right, so I decided to find out what more I could have been wrong about. Right now, there is one more thing that I have doubts about: I have a circular dependency in my codebase that I would like to present in UML form. But how.
In my case the following is true:
Both A and B have a list of C
C has a reference to both A and B to get information from.
C cannot exist if either A or B stops to exist
Both A and B remain to exist after C is deleted from A and/or B
To model this, I've come up with the following UML (I've ommited multiplicities for now, to not crowd the diagram.)
My question is, is this the right way to model such relations?
Problems
Some facts to keep in mind:
Default multiplicity makes your model invalid. A class may only be composed in one other class. When you don't specify multiplicity, you get [1..1]. That default is sad, but true.
The UML spec doesn't define what open-diamond aggregation means.
Your model has many duplicate properties. There is no need for any of the properties in the attribute compartments, as there are already unnamed properties at the ends of every association.
Corrections
Here is a reworking of your model to make it more correct:
Notice the following:
The exclusive-or constraint between the associations means only one of them can exist at a time.
Unfortunately, the multiplicities allow an instance of C to exist without being composed by A or B. (See the reworked model below.)
The property names at the ends of all associations explicitly name what were unnamed in your model. (I also attempted to indicate purpose in the property names.)
The navigability arrows prevent multiple unwanted properties without resorting to duplicative attributes.
Suggested Design
If I correctly understand what your model means, here is how I would probably reverse the implementation into design:
Notice the following:
Class D is abstract (the class name is in italics), meaning it can have no direct instances.
The generalization set says:
An instance cannot be multiply classified by A and B. (I.e., A and B are {disjoint}.)
An instance of D must be an instance of one of the subclasses. (I.e., A and B are {complete}, which is known as a covering axiom.)
The subclasses inherit the ownedC property from class D.
The composing class can now have a multiplicity of [1..1], which no longer allows an instance of C to exist without being composed by an A or a B.
Leave away the open diamonds and make them normal associations. These are no shared aggregations but simple associations. The composite aggregations are ok.
In general there is not much added value in showing aggregations at all. The semantic added value is very low. In the past this was a good hint to help the garbage collection dealing with unneeded objects. But nowadays almost all target languages have built-in efficient garbage collectors. Only in cases where you want an explicit deletion of the aggregated objects you should use the composite aggregation.
An association defines a semantic relationship between classifiers. The instances of an association are a set of tuples relating instances of the classifiers. Eachtuple value may appear at most once. The Association represents a set of connections among instances of the Classifiers. An instance of an Association is a Link, which is atuple of Instances drawn from the corresponding Classifiers
I wonder if there is someone helps me understand every word of the association definition especially the highlighted ones?because I read about it from different resources but all of them say the same words but I would like a more elaborated definition
semantic relationship
This means there's a structural relationship between the things being associated that arises from the problem space. For example: the association Person owns Dog. In a dog licensing application, this relationship is the central concept; the application exists to manage the links between people and dogs. It's a 'semantic' relationship because it has meaning which originates from the problem space.
set of tuples relating instances of the classifiers
A tuple is 'an ordered set of elements' (wikipedia). An example of the Dog-Ownership association could be ("Fido", "Fred") where "Fido" represents a Dog and "Fred" a Person. An association can be represented as a set of tuples in that there is one tuple for each combination of Dog & Person for which the relation holds; e.g.
[("Fido", "Fred"), ("Angel", "Chuck Norris"), ("Boatswain", "Lord Byron")]
Note there are no tuples for pairs where the relationship doesn't hold; e.g. ("Fido", "Lord Byron").
each tuple value may appear at most once
It's not possible for the set to contain duplicates as this would just be saying the same thing twice. So there's no point adding ("Fido", "Fred") again to the list above; we already know Fred owns Fido.
The Association represents a set of connections among instances of the Classifiers
This is just another way to think about the relationship. For each tuple in the set, you can think of a link - or connection - between the related objects.
An instance of an Association is a Link, which is a tuple of Instances
See above. Each tuple represents one linked pair of objects. Links are to Associations as Objects are to Classes. Classes have many objects; Associations have many Links.
Fundamentally associations exist to show where things are systematically linked to other things. Tuples and sets are a way to think about and/or represent those linked things. (In fact I'd quibble somewhat with the definition in your OP: the links in an association can be represented as as a set of tuples: but that's not what they are, it's how they're modelled. The same information could equally be modelled by a Graph, where each object was represented by a vertex (node) and each association an edge.
hth.
EDIT:
Responding to your questions. Looks like you understand it pretty well; some observations.
First, here's how I would model it:
Now to each of your points:
Name: is the name of Association relationship(optional,you can give it a name or not)
I prefer verb phrase based naming as it brings out the meaning of the relationship. My model can be read directly as:
Each Person owns many Dogs (where 'many' means 0 or more)
Each Dog is owned by exactly one Person
Doing so removes the need to name the association explicitly, although you can still do so if you want.
visibility(I am not care about it,at least for now, I didn't realize its importance until now).
I would agree. Personally, I never annotate models with visibility.
Name:(here is the name of MemberEnd ),so,I left its default name in the screenshot
See comment about association naming above. I prefer verb-based naming to role-based: 'owns' is much more explicit in describing the purpose of a relationship than naming the association end 'dog' or 'dogs'.
the owner of memberEnd [...]
Personally: I don't use this. There's a whole other discussion about this that tbh I don't believe has a material impact in most cases.
Navigable [...]
Again I don't use this personally. In reality navigability should be derived from the underlying behaviour. Does it require navigating one way/both? Then set navigability accordingly. However some people like to specify it explicitly, on basis it makes the implementation clearer (If only navigable one way it can be implemented with reference(s) in one class only; if bi-directional it needs references in both directions - with attendant logic to keep things consistent).
Multiplicity
I agree with your selection.
Hope that helps.