CSA Preface
Standards development within the Information Technology sector is harmonized with international standards development. Through the CSA Technical Committee on Information Technology (TCIT), Canadians serve as the Canadian Advisory Committee (CAC) on ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 on Information Technology (ISO/IEC JTC1) for the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), the ISO member body for Canada and sponsor of the Canadian National Committee of the IEC. Also, as a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Canada participates in the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (ITU-T).
At the time of publication, ISO/IEC 19501:2005 is available from ISO and IEC in English only. CSA will publish the French version when it becomes available from ISO and IEC.
This International Standard was reviewed by the CSA TCIT under the jurisdiction of the Strategic Steering Committee on Information Technology and deemed acceptable for use in Canada. (A committee membership list is available on request from the CSA Project Manager.) From time to time, ISO/IEC may publish addenda, corrigenda, etc. The CSA TCIT will review these documents for approval and publication. For a listing, refer to the CSA Information Products catalogue or CSA Info Update or contact a CSA Sales representative. This Standard has been formally approved, without modification, by the Technical Committee and has been approved as a National Standard of Canada by the Standards Council of Canada.
Scope
This standard specifies the Unified Modeling Language (UML) with the objective of providing system architects working on object analysis and design with one consistent language for specifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of software systems, as well as for business modeling.
This standard represents the convergence of best practices in the object-technology industry. UML is the proper successor to the object modeling languages of three previously leading object-oriented methods (Booch, OMT, and OOSE). The UML is the union of these modeling languages and more, since it includes additional expressiveness to handle modeling problems that these methods did not fully address.
One of the primary goals of UML is to advance the state of the industry by enabling object visual modeling tool interoperability. However, in order to enable meaningful exchange of model information between tools, agreement on semantics and notation is required. UML meets the following requirements:
- Formal definition of a common object analysis and design (OA and D) metamodel to represent the semantics of OA and D models, which include static models, behavioral models, usage models, and architectural models.
- IDL specifications for mechanisms for model interchange between OA and D tools. This document includes a set of IDL interfaces that support dynamic construction and traversal of a user model.
- A human-readable notation for representing OA and D models. This document defines the UML notation, an elegant graphic syntax for consistently expressing the UML's rich semantics. Notation is an essential part of OA and D modeling and the UML.
