After a while, clusters of classes that strongly interact and form a
unit will start to peel out from the architecture. To express this, the corresponding
clusters can be represented as components. If taken far enough, this can lead
to a highly reusable component architecture. But such an architecture is hard
to design from scratch and usually evolves over time. As mentioned above,
component diagrams are, like object diagrams, edited with the deployment diagram editor
and therefore the corresponding model elements are explained in that section.
Nodes and
Instances of Nodes — Nodes
represent the hardware elements of the deployment system.
Components and
Instances of Components —
Components stand for software elements that are deployed to the hardware system.
Links — Links are used to connect instances of
nodes or objects.
Dependencies — Dependencies exist between components
and can be specified by utilizing predefined or user-defined stereotypes.
Associations — Associations are used to display
communication relations between nodes. They can be specified by utilizing
predefined or user-defined stereotypes.
Objects,
Classes,
Interfaces — Components
and nodes can include objects, classes or interfaces.