Dependency relationships

In class diagrams, a dependency relationship indicates that a change to one class, the supplier, might cause a change in the other class, the consumer. The supplier is independent because a change in the consumer does not affect the supplier.

For example, a Cart class depends on a Product class because the Product class is used as a parameter for an add operation in the Cart class. In a class diagram, a dependency relationship points from the Cart class to the Product class. In other words, the Cart class is the consumer element, and the Product class is the supplier element. A change to the Product class may cause a change to the Cart class.

In class diagrams, dependency relationships in a C/C++ application connect two classes to indicate that there is a connection between the two classes, and that the connection is more temporary than an association relationship. A dependency relationship indicates that the consumer class does one of the following things:

As the figures in the following table illustrate, a dependency relationship connector appears as a dashed line with an open arrow that points from the consumer class to the supplier class. A dependency relationship means an "import" statement.

C/C++ source code UML visualization
A snapshot of C/C++ source code for dependency relationships. A diagram illustrating C/C++ dependency relationships is displayed.

Parent topic: Relationships

Related concepts
Association relationships
Generalization relationships
Manifestation relationships
Owned element association relationships
Permission relationships
Abstract generalization
Adornments for unresolved references

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