Confused: Sequence Instance v Component dropped as Lifeline?

[johnks]

Hi

Some of our designers have created sequence diagram lifelines by drag/dropping component classifiers from the project browser as (instance) lifelines. Others have drag/dropped the component classifier as a link and then proceeded to convert them to instances from within the sequence diagram afterwards. The end result is that some designers have created instances of classifiers as elements in the project browser and others have created sequence instances as elements in the browser.

Does anybody know what the significant differences are between these two kinds of element? When I try "find in all diagrams" for the classifier - it happily takes me to both kinds of elements - so the navigation links I want are there. However, I am concerned that there are differences that are meaningful and that I don't fully appreciate. If there are then I may have to go back through the repository content and manually replace all the sequence instances with component instances.

Anyone wrestled with this before?

Many thanks,

John

PS We are modelling at a high level - hence the use of components rather than classes to source our lifelines.

[qwerty]

This is to confuse the Russians as we tend to say in Germany. No reason. This is EAUI. I used to run scripts to clean the mess every now and then. You also need to setup modeling rules in your team for such things.

q-

[johnks]

Thanks Q 

It's not going to be easy controlling the 100+ users I guess 

I think we will have to look at the scripts route. We are a fairly new set up and don't run any SQL against the repository directly (not yet anyway). Is this what you were meaning?

John

[qwerty]

Yes. With that team size you will need a handful of people doing this kind of cleanup regularly. You should at least run a daily model consistency check.

q.

[johnks]

Thanks Q,

I am already building a set of governance related checks to run against the content. I guess this is one to add. For now I will live with the 2 representations of instance. Maybe take the plunge with clean up scripts in a month or two..

John