Behavior (UML)

Behavior (Engl. Behavior ) is in the Unified Modeling Language (UML), a modeling language for software and other systems, both a collective term for the dynamic aspects of a modeled system and a metaclass can be modeled with such aspects.

In order to be able to distinguish between these two meanings, we speak of behavior description when we mean the metaclass, and behavior when we mean the dynamic aspects that a behavior description specifies.

The UML is based on two assumptions for the specification of a behavior. First, the behavior in a modeled system is always based on instances of active classes , that is, on active objects . Second, the behavior of a system modeled with the UML is always event-driven or discrete .

The fundamental building blocks for the description of the behavior are the actions . They are combined with either activities , interactions or state machines to create more complex behaviors. These three behavioral specifications higher order have certain similarities in the metaclass behavioral description (. English Behavior ) are combined - the activity , the interactions and the state machine are specializations of it.

The first thing all behavior descriptions have in common is that they have a list of parameters . Parameters are the placeholders through which values ​​are passed to the behavior description before the behavior execution and to which values ​​are returned after the behavior execution . Furthermore, all behavioral descriptions have in common that they can describe the behavior behind a behavioral characteristic . In this case, the description of behavior is also called the method of a behavioral characteristic. All behavior descriptions are also defined in the context of a classifier. The context defines the area within which the behavior description can access other model elements or structural features.

Differences to UML 1.4

The Behavior metaclass was newly introduced in the UML2 metamodel .