Classes |
A class
represents an entity within the system which models a real-world object.
School,
Student and Course
are all examples of classes. A
class is made up of attributes
and operations. Often
you will see operations referred to as methods.
Attributes define the information that each class knows about itself. In the example above, each school has a name and an address. In the UML, attributes are shown in the following format:
visibility: name: type = default value
The visibility indicates whether the attribute is public (+), private (-), or protected (#). In Visual Case, you must specify the name and the visibility. The type and the default value are optional.
Operations are processes that a class can carry out. In our example above, the school class has two operations specified: getName and setName. The getName operation returns the schools name. The setName operation changes the school's name to the value of the input parameter "name".
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