Actors and Players

[lad4bear]

Hi Guys,

On my use-case digrams I'm defining my actors using genric role names. To help the client understand the model more easily I'd like to show a list of people / organisation that play these roles along with the role name itself.

ie. Payment Gateway (PayPal, WorldPay) etc.

Is this possible and what's the best way to do this so it appears in documentation also.

Cheers, Pete (aka lad4bear)

[thomaskilian]

Hi Peter,
the easiest (and probably best) way is to write down this information in the Actors note field. You can attach the note contents by creating a diagram note, connecting it with the actor and placing the note contents via right-click to the note connector "Link this Note to an Element Feature/Element Note". Probably you will be able to use RTF style from EA 5.0 on
Another way is to use generalized Actors. I'd recommend this only if the specialized Actors bring in different behaviour.

[lad4bear]

Thanks for the info. I was trying to avoid the use of notes as they have a tendancy to clutter the diagram. For the time being I may just include it in the Actor name and move it to the Actor notes once its been agreed. Generalization would definately be overkill!

Pete (aka lad4bear)

[Bruno.Cossi]

Hi Peter,

sounds like Paypal and Worldpay would be instances of "Payment Gateway" to me.

Bruno

Hi Guys,

On my use-case digrams I'm defining my actors using genric role names. To help the client understand the model more easily I'd like to show a list of people / organisation that play these roles along with the role name itself.

ie. Payment Gateway (PayPal, WorldPay) etc.

Is this possible and what's the best way to do this so it appears in documentation also.

Cheers, Pete (aka lad4bear)

[lad4bear]

That's what I meant by "Players". I was trying to maintain the analogy. A Player adopts the role of an Actor. Thus PayPal adopts the role of Payment Gateway.

I think next time I'll just say instantiates cos that way everyone will know what I'm on about   Thanks for the feedback though - I love this tool!

Cheers, Pete (aka lad4bear)

[Bruno.Cossi]

Hi Peter,

I understand what you meant, what I was trying to say is that you could model this by actually creating the instances within EA, instead of describing this within the note.

Hope this helps!
Bruno

That's what I meant by "Players". I was trying to maintain the analogy. A Player adopts the role of an Actor. Thus PayPal adopts the role of Payment Gateway.

I think next time I'll just say instantiates cos that way everyone will know what I'm on about   Thanks for the feedback though - I love this tool!

Cheers, Pete (aka lad4bear)

[lad4bear]

Thanks Bruno, I didn't think of it that way. I won't handle it this way on this occasion but will definately keep it in mind for the future.

Cheers, Pete (aka lad4bear)