Object-modeling language

As shown in the graphic there were efforts starting in the mid 1990s to reconcile the leading models and focus on one unified specification.

The UML began as an attempt by some of the major thought leaders in the community to define a standard language at the OOPSLA '95 Conference.

At the time Rational and Objectory were two of the dominant players in the small world of independent vendors of Object-Oriented tools and methods.

However, in those cases the meta-model is meant primarily to be used by developers at run time to dynamically inspect and modify an application object model.

The UML meta-model provides a mathematical formal foundation for the various graphic views used by the modeling language to describe an emerging system.

Behavior diagrams specify the dynamic aspects of the model, business process logic, coordination and timing of distributed objects, etc.