Getting to Know the Unified Modeling Language

In this chapter, we introduce you to the concepts of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Our intention with this chapter is to give you a clear understanding of what UML really is, its historical background, and how it’s used. UML is a modeling language, meaning that it’s a language or concept for how to model and describe real-world objects and how they interact. The difference between UML and a normal programming language is that UML is a graphical language that uses graphics to describe objects. UML is also used to describe design patterns,1 which you can apply to your .NET environment.