The primary goals in the design of the UML were:
1. Provide users with a ready-to-use, expressive visual modeling language so they can develop and exchange meaningful models.
2. Provide extensibility and specialization mechanisms to extend the core concepts.
3. Be independent of particular programming languages and development processes.
4. Provide a formal basis for understanding the modeling language.
5. Encourage the growth of the OO tools market.
6. Support higher-level development concepts such as collaborations, frameworks, patterns and components.
7. Integrate best practices.