Component Diagrams

A component diagram is a UML diagram that provides a view of the physical software components in a software system, their interfaces, and their dependencies. Components are physical, replaceable parts of a system, such as executables, libraries, software components (for example, ActiveX or JavaBean components), documents, databases, and files. A component diagram can depict all or some of the components in a system.

Component diagrams can contain shapes and connectors that represent:

• components

• interfaces

• association relationships

• dependency relationships

• realization relationships

• reside relationships

The component diagram shows only component types. Component instances are usually used to represent components that exist at run-time, so they usually appear in deployment diagrams.

Component diagrams depict the physical parts of software systems. Often, they are used during the development of a system architecture to model the following:

• Source code (files that you develop in an integrated development environments)

• Executable releases (the parts necessary to deliver a running system)

• Physical databases (storage of information in the tables of a relational database or pages of an object-oriented database)

• Adaptable systems (systems that have components that migrate for purposes of load balancing and failure recovery)

• Working with Component Diagrams
• Component Instances
• Deployment Diagrams

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