Comparison of two approaches to structuring the Activity diagram (based on "Squirrels")
В we simulated the processes of a “fabulous” subject area - a line about a squirrel from Pushkin’s “The Tale of Tsar Saltan, his glorious and mighty son Prince Gvidon Saltanovich and the beautiful Swan Princess”. And we started with the Activity diagram, agreeing on structuring the diagram field with the help of "swimming" lanes - Swim lanes. The name of the lane corresponds to the type of diagram elements that are present on this lane: Input and Output Artifacts, Process Steps, Participants, and Business Rules. This approach differs from the standard one, when the lanes are designated by the names of the participants in the process, thus assigning certain areas of responsibility to them in the process.
In this example, I am using the Enterprise Architect environment from an Australian company. [1].
See [2] for more details on the modeling approaches used.
For the complete UML specification, see [3].
I will repeat the version of the diagram from the previous article (Figure 1) and show a redrawn diagram with “standard” tracks (Figure 2), I will try to indicate the pros and cons, maybe a little subjectively.
Figure 1. Activity diagram - a general view of the process
Figure 2. Activity diagram - standard diagram structuring
- It must be admitted that the number of arrows is slightly less in the 2nd diagram.
- But on the 2nd diagram, the objects are "smeared" over the entire field of the diagram, which, for my taste, is not very convenient.
- The same story with notes - rules. And in order to insert the rule about the appointment of a deacon, all the elements of the diagram had to be moved down at some point.
- I had to clone the "receive / transmit ..." step to show that several participants are present at this step.
- In the second variant, I had to abandon one branching and one merging of the process, well, it was absolutely impossible to put them in a “beautiful” way! On good, it would be necessary then to hang up the comment - a rule.
Of course, there are no comrades for taste and color, but the first option seems to me even more convenient for collecting data on the process.
But I will not dissemble - sometimes both options are better to draw in order to understand the process.
List of sources
- Sparx Systems website. [Electronic resource] Access mode: Internet:
- Zolotukhina E.B., Vishnya A.S., Krasnikova S.A. Modeling of business processes. - M .: KURS, NITs INFRA-M, EBS Znanium.com. — 2017.
- OMG Unified Modeling Language (OMG UML) Specification. Version 2.5.1. [Electronic resource] Access mode: Internet:
Source: habr.com