UML: Abstraction as a Criterion for Defining Class Diagrams and Object Diagrams

UML is undisputedly the most efficient and effective tool of information systems analysis and design. Abstraction as paradigm, represent the basis of an object-oriented approach to development of information system and software solutions. No matter what background team members have (i.e. information technology or problem domain experts), the capability of abstraction is of crucial importance, especially at the early phase of the system’s structure identification. Since class and object diagrams specify system’s structure, indicating how to identify and relate them, they are an issue for system analysts and designers. This paper examines the following issue: to what extent abstraction level influences the need for creating object diagrams in shaping class diagrams and vice versa to what extent concretization at the level of an object diagrams influences structural decomposition of class diagrams.