Here's a question about objects that show up in a sequence and collaboration diagrams. My understanding is that the two diagrams can show nearly the same information, so I would expect that an object can show up in either diagram.
Attached is a screen shot of the project browser for an example. The "User Interface" package contains a sequence diagram and a collaboration diagram. The bottom three icons represent "sequence elements"--per EA help files. The middle two icons represent objects.
Here is the story: I created the sequence diagram first, and instantiated objects using the outlook bar, which resulted in the three "sequence elements". I would expect I could then instantiate this object into a collaboration diagram. (Instantiate in the sense of putting the sequence element in the new diagram as a simple link.)
However, when I drag-and-drop a sequence element into the collaboration diagram, a new object is created. These are how the two objects were created in the above example.
How is the object in the collaboration diagram different from the sequence element in the sequence diagram? Or, why is a new, separate object created? And how can I track that they are instances of the same thing (as the design progresses)?
Here's the twist: If I first create an object in the collaboration diagram (dragged from the outlook bar), and then drag-and-drop it from the project browser into the sequence diagram, no new sequence element is created--the object itself shows up in the sequence diagram.
Comments that shed some light on this behavior are appreciated...
JEff
