Implementation Diagram

Structural Modeling Diagrams

Implementation Diagram

In the Unified Modeling Language, a deployment diagram serves to model the hardware used in system implementations, the components deployed on the hardware, and the associations between those components. The elements used in deployment diagrams are nodes (shown as a cube), components (shown as a rectangular box, with two rectangles protruding from the left side) and associations. In UML 2.0 components are not placed in nodes. Instead artifacts and nodes are placed in nodes. An artifact is something like a file, program, library, or data base constructed or modified in a project. These artifacts implement collections of components. The inner nodes indicate execution environments rather than hardware.

A deployment diagram models the run-time architecture of a system. It shows the configuration of the hardware elements (nodes) and shows how software elements and artifacts are mapped onto those nodes.

Node

A Node is either a hardware or software element. It is shown as a three-dimensional box shape, as shown below:

Node Instance

A node instance can be shown on a diagram. An instance can be distinguished from a node by the fact that its name is underlined and has a colon before its base node type. An instance may or may not have a name before the colon. The following diagram shows a named instance of a computer.

Node Stereotypes

A number of standard stereotypes are provided for nodes, namely «cdrom», «cd-rom», «computer», «disk array», «pc», «pc client», «pc server», «secure», «server», «storage», «Linux Web server», «user pc». These will display an appropriate icon in the top right corner of the node symbol.

Association

In the context of a deployment diagram, an association represents a communication path between nodes. The following diagram shows a deployment diagram for a network, depicting network protocols as stereotypes, and multiplicities at the association ends.