UML diagram for design patterns

Abstract

UML has been used widely as a design and analysis tool for object-oriented software projects. Despite of having a good number of diagram categories, UML is still lacking of a dedicated set of diagrams for representing design patterns. While numerous works have been published on attempts to describe design patterns in terms of UML features, there is hardly any work has been done on attempts to un-clutter class diagrams at the initial development stage so that the design patterns in used can be seen clearly. With the aim to tidy-up huge networks of interconnecting class diagrams, this paper proposes a new higher level set of diagrams and layout schemes to better highlight the design patterns used in a software architecture. This proposal can go further as a proposal for a new set of diagram in UML standard. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.