Newbie UML question: configuration parameters?

[gecko]

I have a number of Components, whose runtime behaviour depends on configuration parameters. The parameter values are specified in text files, which are read by the components at start-up.

How do i illustrate this in UML?

[Paul Lotz]

Do you want to model the configuration file data, the initialization behavior, or both?

[gecko]

I would like to model - in a Component diagram(?) - the fact that there are configuration files, which are used for initialization of my Components.

(Modeling of configuration file data is not important right now.)

Thanks.

[Paul Lotz]

Well, one can show files as artifacts in a deployment diagram.

What we do:
On our statemachine diagrams I make a note that we read initialization files on a transition between two specific states.
We don't show the files directly, but we include descriptions of the data structures in the configuration files as classes (well, in our case we are modeling something that isn't exactly a class, but that's not important here) in the model.

[Paul Lotz]

Oh, and the classes that use a configuration have an attribute for that configuration.

[gecko]

Thanks