What is the Further Evidence about UML? - A Systematic Literature Review

Context: Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a modeling language in software engineering. It has become the industrial standard for software development. Although the Unified Modeling Language has been widely studied, it still has little further empirical knowledge about the notations of the UML. Objectives: To determine the further development trend of the notations of the UML, as well as their benefits, in different aspects of UML, and to identify which diagrams of the UML have been studied in most frequently. Method: Based on a systematic review in 2008 and several related works we performed an extended systematic literature review, and classified them according to the identified categories-comprehension, model quality, adoption, metrics, methods and tools. Results: We found 420 candidate papers, and 33 empirical papers of them had been identified, the results were expressed in the article. Conclusions: Compared the original study, the larger group of empirical studies of the UML through our analysis concentrates on comprehension, model quality and adoption, but adoption of UML is being studied by researchers and will be more and more interested in industry practitioners.