Actors in a Class

[markl]

Take MySupplier for example they are a supplier, so they are in the class 'suppliers' They are also potential partners and so are in a subclass of partners. How can an actor in both classes?

When does an actor become a class? If MySupplier is an actor and also in the class 'suppliers' what notation should be used to denote that this actor is in a class?

[qwerty]

A class is a realization of an actor. You create the class in a different package (see MDA - CIM/PIM/PSM) and possibly relate it to your actor.

I'd recommend to look into ICONIX for a good methodology.

q.

[Paulus]

That looks a lot like role-based authorization: look at actors not as 'physical persons' but as 'roles a physical person can have'. A person can then at one time use the system in the role of 'Supplier' and at another time as 'Partner'.

So, 'Supplier' is an Actor just as 'Partner' is and what you now need is a matrix defining which roles a particular physical (group of) persons can have. This matrix is independent of the rest of the description of your system (apart from the various roles you introduce of course) so you can model this any way you like.

One way would be to define physical (groups of) persons also as actors, but in a separate package 'Physical actors' and use a dependency or trace relation to the specific roles they can perform. The advantage of this is that you can use the 'relationship matrix view' to maintain these relations  

hope this helps,

Paulus