  The paper presents the essential features of a new member of the UML language
family that supports working with object-oriented frameworks. This UML
extension, called UML-F, allows the explicit representation of framework
variation points. The paper discusses some of the relevant aspects of UML-F,
which is based on standard UML extension mechanisms. A case study shows how it
can be used to assist framework development. A discussion of additional tools
for automating framework implementation and instantiation rounds out the paper.
