Association classes

In UML diagrams, an association class is a class that is part of an association relationship between two other classes.

You can attach an association class to an association relationship to provide additional information about the relationship. An association class is identical to other classes and can contain operations, attributes, as well as other associations.

For example, a class called Student represents a student and has an association with a class called Course, which represents an educational course. The Student class can enroll in a course. An association class called Enrollment further defines the relationship between the Student and Course classes by providing section, grade, and semester information related to the association relationship.

As the following figure illustrates, an association class is connected to an association by a dotted line.