Hello fellow Moosers!
The following is a seemingly long post, but very simple to follow. I promise
I'd like to use an Activity diagram to model a certain method in my application. The application gets a hierarchy of interleaved entities--TypeA and TypeB--from a database, based on an initial selection. For example, if a TypeB entity was selected, then the next highest entity would be TypeA, and so forth.
The returned list might look like this:
TypeA
TypeB
TypeA
TypeB
TypeA
TypeB (this was the originally selected entity; it started the upward search)
Simple enough, eh? A simplified description of the method looks like this:
Ok, I used to model these things with my own self-styled flow diagrams. It was easy because I used diamonds to indicate decisions and starts of loops, and then I added some text to explain trips to the database, etc.
Activity diagrams are different in that they include both decision diamonds
and activities. I find it hard to know when to use each. For example, should I name �Determine if TypeA or TypeB� as an activtiy or should it actually be a decision diamond?
Since I can't find any Activity diagrams on the net, that pertain to computer algorithms, I've been using this example...
http://etna.int-evry.fr/COURS/UML/notation/notation10.html ...which also confounds me a bit. For example, why isn't the activity �Find Beverage� a decision diamond instead? And why isn't the �no cola/found cola� decision diamond an activity?
Any smart guys out there who can shed some light on this?
Thanks in advance!
Kristian
[ May 30, 2006: Message edited by: Kristian Kringleheimer ]