Component Diagrams

After a while, clusters of classes that strongly interact and form a unit will start to peal out in 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.

Figure 9-21. A Component Diagram.

Diagram Elements

Toolbar

Select

Broom

Node

Instance of a Node

Component

Instance of a Component

Dependency

Class

Interface

Association

Object

Link

Rectangle

Rounded Rectangle

Circle

Line

Text

Polygon

Spline

Ink