This article introduces the component diagram, a structure diagram within the new Unified Modeling Language 2.0 specification.
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The diagram's purpose
The component diagram’s main purpose is to show the structural relationships between the components of a system. In UML 1.1, a component represented implementation items, such as files and executables. Unfortunately, this conflicted with the more common use of the term “component," which refers to things such as COM components. Over time and across successive releases of UML, the original UML meaning of components was mostly lost. UML 2 officially changes the essential meaning of the component concept; in UML 2, components are considered autonomous, encapsulated units within a system or subsystem that provide one or more interfaces. Although the UML 2 specification does not strictly state it, components are larger design units that represent things that will typically be implemented using “replaceable" modules. But, unlike UML 1.x, components are now strictly logical, design-time constructs. The idea is that you can easily reuse and/or substitute a different component implementation in your designs because a component encapsulates behavior and implements specified interfaces.1
In component-based development (CBD), component diagrams offer architects a natural format to begin modeling a solution. Component diagrams allow an architect to verify that a system’s required functionality is being implemented by components, thus ensuring that the eventual system will be acceptable.
In addition, component diagrams are useful communication tools for various groups. The diagrams can be presented to key project stakeholders and implementation staff. While component diagrams are generally geared towards a system’s implementation staff, component diagrams can generally put stakeholders at ease because the diagram presents an early understanding of the overall system that is being built.
Developers find the component diagram useful because it provides them with a high-level, architectural view of the system that they will be building, which helps developers begin formalizing a roadmap for the implementation, and make decisions about task assignments and/or needed skill enhancements. System administrators find component diagrams useful because they get an early view of the logical software components that will be running on their systems. Although system administrators will not be able to identify the physical machines or the physical executables from the diagram, a component diagram will nevertheless be welcomed because it provides early information about the components and their relationships (which allows sys-admins to loosely plan ahead).
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