You might want to take a look at a book called Enterprise Java with UML. It is a very good book on UML and J2EE. You will find plenty of EJB UML diagrams in there.

I have this book and find it excellent. My only gripe is that it doesn't mention JSP pages whatsoever so I'm unsure how to model them :(

Better intro to OO analysis than my tertiary course!

ASPs (Active Server Pages) are analogous to JSPs. Rational Rose reverse engineers ASPs as COMPONENTS.

At first I thought this was weird. Our first instinct is to think of them as some type of class. But, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to call them components.

A single ASP/JSP can perform multiple functions, and provide multiple user interfaces. Yet, it does not have an object interface, so a class is not appropriate. It can be parameterized, and it always performs at least one function. If it looks like a component, smells like a component, and tastes like a component, then it must be a component.

The best you get out the UML it is navigation and dependency diagrams. The reverse engineering showed the components it used (dependency), as well as other ASP/HTML pages it called (navigability/dependency).

However, the diagram of all the pages was so complex, its only purpose for us was a nice wall hanging demonstrating just how complex our system was. In reality, we knew the system enough to not need the diagram, and a new developer might look at the diagram and just say "huh?". After all, you really don't understand it until you look at the code and use the system; if you look at the code, then you don't usually need the diagram anymore.

> However, the diagram of all the pages was so complex,
> its only purpose for us was a nice wall hanging
> demonstrating just how complex our system was. In
> reality, we knew the system enough to not need the
> diagram, and a new developer might look at the
> diagram and just say "huh?". After all, you really
> don't understand it until you look at the code and
> use the system; if you look at the code, then you
> don't usually need the diagram anymore.

Its pretty hard to strike a good balance :(

Thanks for the suggestions.