Activity Diagrams for Class Operations

[kelly_sumrall]

I would like to see the ability for class operations to contain activity diagrams.  I know a class operation has a behaviour section (may be good for action language in future), but this doesn't work for visually documenting complex operations.  A diagram contained in the tree node of the class operation would aid in the organization of the project.

[mldavis99]

  This is a very good one and I would hope could open the door to also adding reverse engineering of code into activity diagrams.  There are currently a few stand alone tools which do this ( Visustin Flow Chart Generator  http://www.aivosto.com/visustin.html  and FateSoft SourceCode2FlowChart http://www.fatesoft.com/s2f/index.htm).  This would very much close the loop on EA making it a very complete round trip engineering tool! It's already the best on the street IMHO.

[crj18]

I agree that this is a good idea.  I would also like to have sequence diagrams in a class operation....this would allow me to do high level sequence diagrams that show the major method calls, but by looking in one of these operations one could discover the lower level methods that are being used.

Anyway, the suggestion was made 2 years ago....has anything happened?

[fwoolz]

Ditto... I would add State Machine Diagrams to the list, such that class operations could be described with activity diagrams, sequence diagrams, or statecharts.

[crj18]

Actually there is kind of a way to do it: If you select an operation in the project browser and then create a new diagram, this diagram will be created inside the operation.  But this relationship only exists in the project broswer.  And as soon as you drag the diagram outside the operation then you can't drag it back in.  And you can't move existing diagrams into an operation.  
Given this lack of support, I suspect that the ability to create a diagram inside an operation is just a bug, and it is probably best not to use it until it is properly supported.

[thomaskilian]

PAOOOOOLO

[Eve]

Please don't create diagrams under your methods using this method.  It is a bug and one that will be fixed in the next version of EA.  There is no support for operations containing diagrams.  If you attempt to add a class to that diagram EA gives an error, when you reload the model the diagram won't be present.

If you really want a diagram that is linked to an operation I would suggest storing the diagram guid in an operation tagged value.  You could even get an addin to open the corresponding diagram to a currently selected operation.

Simon

[mikewhit]

I would like to see the ability for class operations to contain activity diagrams

It seems that UML mainly considers activities to be relevant for Analysis/high-level rather than Design/implementation ...?

Activity diagrams are used to model the behaviours of a system, and the way in which these behaviours are related in an overall flow of the system