Today I was surprised to hear that I have co-workers that think that UML has a diagram for a relational database design. I responded by saying that the design of a database is not object oriented but relational and since UML is a modelling language for object orientated systems it would be illogical for UML to have a diagram for relational databases. These concepts are very different. But no I was told. No, no UML has a diagram for relational databases. Tables in a database have methods, select, insert, update, delete and triggers. If I wasn't in a shock I would have laughed. I never heard such nonsense. Humbug as Dickens would say. I tried again to make the point that the relational concept totally differs from the object oriented concept to no avail. One of them said that he was playing with words, that conceptually the database model (the entity-relational diagram) could be represented by UML. OK, and my ass can be conceptually represented by UML as well. Total nonsense. Start reading some books, guys. Start with some basic concepts.
Of course it is possible to model classes in UML that represent tables. This is a common practice. The 'Active Record' design pattern is an example. But this is not a database model and it is not really object oriented. I guess this is what they meant. But then I think they still don't know what they are talking about. They don't know the difference. That is really worry some, I think. If we are talking about a design in the future will we talk about the same things?