Using UML to model relational database operations

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is being used as the de-facto standard in the software industry. With the adoption of UML 2.0, the new enhancements allow this version to describe many of the elements found in today's software technology as well as Model Driven Architecture and Service-Oriented Architecture. Although the Object Management Group (OMG) has released several UML Profiles to tailor the language to specific areas, relational database modeling is not fully addressed in these profiles. Many existing software applications involve complex application layer implemented in object-oriented programming languages and at the same time use relational database systems as the back-end data store. Modeling the whole system in a consistent manner will help developers and end users better understand the application. In this work we show how to model relational database operations using UML. Atomic database operations are modeled based on our framework and are used as building blocks to model more complex database operations.