Tutorial: describing software architecture with UML

Abstract

The presence of a solid architectural vision is a key discriminator in the success or failure of a software project. This paper examines what software architecture is and what it is not. It discusses and illustrates how to describe architecture through a set of design viewpoints and views and how to express these views in the UML, in the spirit of the new IEEE Standard 1471:2000: Recommended practice for architectural description. The paper shows of how architectures drive the development process and how to capture architectural design patterns using the UML. It is illustrated by several widely applicable architectural patterns in different domain.