The Role of Collaboration Diagrams in OO Software Engineering Student Projects

Among major UML diagrams, the collaboration diagram is less used by the software industry than others in object-oriented software engineering (OOSE). Despite the belief that the sequence diagram is both similar to and more useful than the collaboration diagram, the latter remains very useful for teaching OOSE through student projects. This paper compares the two diagrams, discusses the importance of analysis, and elaborates on the unique role of the collaboration diagram in analysis of OOSE student projects. An example of a real student project is presented to illustrate these points.