DEV475 Mastering Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with UML ...

DEV475 Mastering Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with UMLWhat Is an Attribute?What Is an Attribute?• An attribute is a named property of a class thatdescribes a range of values that instances ofthe property may hold.• A class may have any number of attributes or no attributes at all.AttributesStudent-name- address- studentID- dateOfBirthMastering Object Oriented Analysis and Design with UMLCopyright © 2003 Rational Software, all rights reserved 26An attribute can be defined as:A named property of a class that describes the range of values that instances of theproperty may hold. (The Unified Modeling Language User Guide, Booch, 1999)• A class may have any number of attributes or no attributes at all. At any time, anobject of a class will have specific values for every one of its class’ attributes.• An attribute defined by a class represents a named property of the class or itsobjects. An attribute has a type that defines the type of its instances.• An attribute has a type, which tells us what kind of attribute it is. Typicalattributes are integer, Boolean, real, and enumeration. These are called primitivetypes. Primitive types can be specific for a certain programming language.2 - 26