Messages

1

Bugs and Issues / Re: Activity Diagram and Constraints

« on: August 14, 2008, 04:22:04 pm »

Great, thanks, the constraints are now showing but I don't understand why they want to force me to use rectangular notation, odd. Guess I'll have to use the note constraints instead since the rectangular notation is really odd and it's not possible to activate it for actions.

2

Bugs and Issues / Activity Diagram and Constraints

« on: August 13, 2008, 11:25:22 pm »

I want to show constraints in an Activity Diagram. I've tried enabling it by right-clicking the diagram and checking the box:
Show Compartments -> Constraints
I've also used:
Element->Feature visibility-> Constraints
And nothing works. If anyone knows how to solve this please let me know.

3

Uml Process / Re: Structured Activity vs. Activity

« on: February 11, 2008, 06:43:03 am »

Thanks, now i can put that behind me.

Notation would be nice. Perhaps i should look in to suggesting it to the OMG, my company is probably already involved.

4

Uml Process / Re: Structured Activity vs. Activity

« on: February 11, 2008, 06:20:14 am »

Thanks for the rapid response, really appreciated.

Again i took your advice and reread what I've written as well as browsed through some articles on the subject. I guess I was right when I assumed that Structured Activities are just structural elements that enforces a design pattern.

Concerning the notation I'm not sure that I agree when you say that no additional notation is needed. It sure would be nice and in my opinion might lend quite alot to the readability of a model.

The last little isssue where i pitted the Expansion Region against the Structured Activity, was resolved as follows:
Expansion Region = Operations on whole sets of data.
Structured Activities (Loop nodes) = The whole iteration package i.e setup, test and body!

That sound about right?

5

Uml Process / Re: Structured Activity vs. Activity

« on: February 11, 2008, 02:05:45 am »

First of all i wanted to say that I'm sorry that I haven't been able to reply until now and also to say thank you for the replies.

I've started reading the UML superstructure as was suggested and I'm still quite puzzled by this. As far as I can tell all the Structured Activites is a generalization of the Structured Activity Node and an Activity is a generalization of the Redefinable Element. This states that there has to be some difference between the two. I started listing the most important differences and came up with the two following:

* An Activity consists of (mostly) Actions, edges and decision nodes, it cannot contain other Activities whereas a Structured Activity can, and probably have to, contain Activities.

* The only order of execution in an Activity is only governed by it's edges and to some extent by signals. In a Structured Activity the order of execution is also influenced by the type of Structured Activity.

As I state in the last clause i believe that the order of execution is influenced by the type of Structured Activity i found this little tidbit in the Superstructure Document intriguing:

"12.3.35 LoopNode (from CompleteStructuredActivities, StructuredActivities)
A loop node is a structured activity node that represents a loop with setup, test, and body sections.
Generalizations"

And:

"Notation
No specific notation.
Rationale
Loop nodes are introduced to provide a structured way to represent iteration."

What's the point with introducing this in EA when there's no notation for it, I mean you still have to model it since there's no syntactical sugar?

My continuing rant will now focus on the expansion regions.

I looked up Expansion Regions and found that a Expcansion Region is defined as:

"12.3.27 ExpansionRegion (from ExtraStructuredActivities)
An expansion region is a structured activity region that executes multiple times corresponding to elements of an input
collection.
Generalizations
• “StructuredActivityNode (from CompleteStructuredActivities, StructuredActivities)” on page 396"

Here we go, Isn't this iteration? Sure there's no conditional part but on the other hand there is notation so if I model the conditional part prior to entering the expansion region ain't I saying the same thing as if I would have used a loop node but with less hassle?

Phew, that was a long one. If anyone has the stamina to read this and reply  would be great.

Thanks in advance.

6

Uml Process / Structured Activity vs. Activity

« on: November 21, 2007, 02:22:23 am »

Hi, I've been looking through the documentation and can't seem to get a clear definition about the differences between an Activity and a Structured Activty. Are there any? Or is this just a way of saying the same thing in two different ways?

Copied from the EA User Guide:

There are five types of Structured Activity, each representing a particular structure of activity events. The five types are represented below:

· Simple Composite - represents an arrangement of activities that take place independent of each other

· Structured Activity node - represents an ordered arrangement of activities; that is, activities that have relationships

· Conditional node - represents an arrangement of activities where choice determines which activities are performed

· Sequential node - represents a sequential arrangement of activities

· Loop node - represents a sequence of activities that are - or can be - repeated on the same object.

As far as i can tell all of the above can be represented with the use of expansion regions or just ordinary activities...



Any input other than my own is really appreciated.

7

Uml Process / Re: Requirements model

« on: November 07, 2007, 04:11:26 am »

Thanks, that really nails it.

8

Uml Process / Requirements model

« on: October 23, 2007, 11:57:34 pm »

Hi, I've just started looking at the requirements model in EA and just can't seem to grasp what they mean. What I really would appreciate is if someone could give me (or point to) information concerning:
What is the difference between the feature and requirement element?

Thanks in advance.