The specification of UML collaborations as interaction components

Abstract

One of the touchstones of Object-Oriented Design is that the management of complexity is seldom located within any single object. It should instead be an emerging property of the collaborations within a society of objects, each one of these being as simple as possible. These collaborations can easily be specified using UML collaboration diagrams. We propose to reify UML collaborations as interaction components. This allows the easy handling and reusing of interaction abstractions among components at both specification and implementation levels. This paper focuses on the specification of these components. We propose criteria to define the type and the "frontier" of an interaction abstraction. We present a UML collaboration specification methodology that deals with the constraints of component specification. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002.