UML Deployment Diagrams Versus Entity-Relationship Diagrams

This article discusses two ways of representing systems using diagrams: Unified Modeling Language (UML) deployment diagrams and entity-relationship diagrams (ERD). UML deployment diagrams show execution architecture, including nodes such as hardware and software environments, the middleware connecting them, communication links, and file placement. ERDs illustrate relationships of entities stored in a database, representing data storage in the database. Key components of an ERD include entities, actions, attributes, connecting lines, and cardinality. The main difference between UML deployment diagrams and ERDs is that the former models system hardware and its interaction with software, while the latter models databases and their entity relationships.