Association tags

In theory, an UML association consists of at least two association ends. eUML2 Modeler supports only the associations with two ends. All UML association data are stored in each association end, which corresponds a property. A property as an association end must is tagged by @uml.associationEnd. The other tags @uml.associationand @uml. associationStereotype are optional.

Here is an example of an association between Company and Employee:

The association has an UML stereotype of type Realization.

public class Employee
{
	/**
	 * @uml.property name="company"
	 * @uml.associationEnd inverse="employees:database.Company"
	 * 		multiplicity="(0 1)"
	 * @uml.associationStereotype 
	 * 		uml_id="Intermediate::Realization" 
	 * @uml.association name="employment"
	 */
	private Company company;

	...
}

public class Company
{
	/**
	 * @uml.property name="employees"
	 * @uml.associationEnd inverse="company:database.Employee"
	 *		 multiplicity="(0 -1)"
	 * @uml.associationStereotype
	 * 			uml_id="Intermediate::Realization" 
	 * @uml.association name="employment"
	 */
	private Collection employees;

	...
}

Let’s consider a complicate example: the n-ary qualified association. If all employees are classified by their positions, we have the following design.

public class Company
{
	/**
	 * @uml.property name="employees"
	 * @uml.associationEnd inverse="company:model.Employee" 
	 *		qualifier="position:java.lang.String model.Employee"
	 *		multiplicity="(0 -1)"
	 */
	private Map employeesMap;

	/**
	 * @uml.property name="employees"
	 */
	public Collection getEmployees(String key){
		return (Collection) this.employeesMap.get(key);
	}
	...
}

public class Employee
{
	/**
	 * @uml.property name="company"
	 * @uml.associationEnd inverse="employees:model.Company"
	 */
	private Company company;

	...
}

@uml.association (0…1)

Name	Value Type	Cardinality	Default value	Description
Name	String	(0…1)	“”	The association name.

@uml.associationStereotype (0…*)

Name	Value Type	Cardinality	Default value	Description
uml_id	String	(1…1)		It is the stereotype id from UML Profile for this association.
identifier	String	(0…*)		Each pair is used to store a value defined in the stereotype.

@uml.associationEnd (1)

Name	Value Type	Cardinality	Default value	Description
readOnly	Boolean	(0…1)	“false”	The value “true” indicates that the property can be read only.
multiplicity	String	(0…1)	“{0 1}”.	The value contains two integer values enclosed by the brackets. The first is lower bound and the second is upper bound.
dimension	Integer	(0…1)	“0”	This is an array dimension of Java field. It is another way to implement N-ary multiplicity.
aggregation	String	(0…1)	none	The possible values are: “shared” to indicate the property is shared in UML 2. It is “aggregate” in UML 1.x. “composite” to indicate the property is aggregated compositely.
container	String	(0…1)	java.util.Collection	This attribute indicates the Java field type. It is necessary if the property is abstract and has n-ary multiplicity. In case of a qualified association with n-ary multiplicity, this attribute is used to specify the collection type. The old name “ javaType” still works.
ordering	String	(0…1)	“false”	If the property is a collection, this attribute indicates whether the element is ordered. Two values of UML 1.x ca be used as well: “ordered” and “unordered”
inverse	String	(0…1)		This value indicates the inverse property. The value is composed of : <property name>:<qualified class name>.
elementType	String	(0…1)		This attribute is used to indicate the element type in collection. It is used only in unidirectional association.
qualifier	String	(0…1)		This attribute contains the qualifier definition if the association is qualified. It is composed of: <key name>:<qualified key type> <qualified value type>