An Experimental Comparison of ER and UML Class Diagrams

Abstract

A data model is a set of concepts that can be used to describe the structure and operations of the database. It represents as a diagram that illustrates all the possible relationships between data elements. Many models are used to represent data. The most famous of these models are ER model and UML class diagrams. Each model has many uses and features different from the other model. The database designers when choosing the right model to represent their data is a hard task for them. In this paper, we have applied an experiment to compare the ER model with UML class diagram. The task of experiment is to determine the strengths and weaknesses points of each model. It is based on matching a given textual specification for a simple application domain against collection of diagrams. The results indicate that ER model is generally better in relationship name and participation representation than the UML class diagram. On the other hand, UML class diagrams provide a better representation for the cardinality relationship compared with ER diagrams.