An Abstraction is a Dependency that relates two NamedElements or sets of NamedElements that represent the same concept at different levels of abstraction or from different viewpoints. The relationship can be defined as a mapping between the suppliers and the clients. Depending on the specific stereotype of Abstraction, the mapping can be formal or informal, and it can be unidirectional or bidirectional. Abstraction has predefined stereotypes (such as <<Derive>>, <<Refine>>, and <<Trace>>).

If an Abstraction has more than one client, the supplier maps into the set of clients as a group. For example, an analysis-level Class might be split into several design-level Classes. The situation is similar if there is more than one supplier.

To model an Abstraction between two classifiers, you create an Abstraction Node, and connect the Classifiers to the Abstraction Node (see Dependency) through the Dependency to Client and Dependency to Supplier relationship.