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UML is too heavy and rigid.

I use my own subset/version of UML, which uses a simplified "grammar", and allows you to express basically only the following:

- Class with attributes - Parent/child relationship - One-to-one relationship - One-to-many relationship - Many-to-many relationship

If I have some other need (rare), then I improvise. Usually I'm the only one who looks at these, but if a client or someone else needs to, the language is simple enough to understand that I can explain it in a few examples/sentences.



An ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram) might be simpler and clearer. In my experiences, stakeholders find them easier to follow than UML class diagrams.


For me its also a lot more useful to document he data model rather than class diagrams. The data model usually changes less than the code.


Agreed. You are right – what I do is much more similar to ERD than UML.




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