A little background
As I mentioned, UML was meant to be a unifying language enabling IT professionals to model computer applications. The primary authors were Jim Rumbaugh, Ivar Jacobson, and Grady Booch, who originally had their own competing methods (OMT, OOSE, and Booch). Eventually, they joined forces and brought about an open standard. (Sound familiar? A similar phenomenon spawned J2EE, SOAP, and Linux.) One reason UML has become a standard modeling language is that it is programming-language independent. (UML modeling tools from IBM Rational are used extensively in J2EE shops as well in .NET shops.) Also, the UML notation set is a language and not a methodology. This is important, because a language, as opposed to a methodology, can easily fit into any company's way of conducting business without requiring change.
