Professional UML with Visual Studio. NET. Unmasking Visio for Enterprise Architects

Although business object modeling is one of the more challenging aspects of analysis and design, it can also be the most rewarding. Business objects make your applications more scaleable and maintainable. They are also a great help in conceiving and designing complex software systems because they bridge the semantic gap by allowing you to model real-world entities. UML class diagrams and sequence diagrams are great tools for designing business objects that work well in both your Windows Forms and ASP.NET applications.

In addition to a high-level discussion of business objects, this chapter also discussed design principles for building business object and data-access base classes for your .NET applications. We learned how to use Visio to model the static nature of business objects in class diagrams and how different UML class adornments translate into elements of .NET classes. We also learned to model the dynamic nature of business objects in Visio sequence diagrams assigning responsibilities that carried out the functionality of use cases. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we also learned that thinking about data during object modeling can help us more quickly create a well-designed, working object model.

Once the dust has settled on your object model, you can begin implementing business objects in your .NET programming language of choice. The next chapter shows how Visio gives you a jump-start on your model by generating code from your object model.