Showing child components on a sequence diagram

[MichaelB123a]

Hi,

I'm drawing a sequence diagram for component interactions and I'm trying to show the internal messaging for one of the components. I know you can use ports and they sit nicely underneath the parent component, but is it possible to have child components shown in the same way? i.e. attached to and underneath the parent?

I think you can do this in SysML, where 'composed of' blocks are shown underneath the composing block, but I can't find anything analogous in UML.

I'm using components for all my objects which can't use composition/aggregation for a start - perhaps I'm mixing my semantics up.

Any though on how to show "child" components of a component doing intra-component messaging on a sequence diagram would be most welcome!

Many thanks in advance,

Michael

[qwerty]

AFAIK you can add only ports to a life line. You could create separate life lines for children near the parent and eventually group them with a boundary (or a fragment which is likely not correct then).

q.

[MichaelB123a]

Thanks for your reply - at least I can stop looking for that functionality!