Re: Shortcuts in UML activity diagrams

Responding to Bialasinski...

I have a questions about shortcuts in UML activity diagrams. My goal
is to create a compact, terse diagram.

(Crude) Example: A user selected several products. in the next
activity, he has to select a color for each product that comes in
multiple colors.

(select products)
|
| products
|
V
(select product colors)
|
| products
|
V
...


I use an expansion region as a loop over the collection of the input
data. Inside the region, one could use a regular branch/merge
construct with a "select color" activity path and a no activity path.

This level of detail would be a lot easier to express in a text-based abstract action language (AAL) because it is fully contained in a single process (method). Traditionally ADs (aka Data Flow Diagrams) were used to graphically describe what went on within individual methods. However, when one needed to add a bubble it was always in middle of the densest part of the diagram and one spent 15 minutes re-doing the layout. So when AALs came along in the late '80s they were quickly adopted.

So today ADs are primarily used for describing large scale activities that span objects. At that level of abstraction, one regards the individual processes as self-contained and logically indivisible. IOW, one will look to individual object method or state machine action descriptions for the details rather than the AD.


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H. S. Lahman
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