dependency vs association again???

[william kane]

What difference would it make if I model a relationship as a dependency or as an association in my analysis/design class diagram?
Ex. What difference would it make to the understanding of the clients(ex teammembers) if I model the relationship between a professor and a whiteboard as dependency(writes on) when compared to modeling it as an association(writes on) in my analysis class diagram and my design class diagram?

[Stan James]

In analysis I've hardly found a need for any line decoration atoll. Those little filled-in diamonds tend to poke through the napkin.
For design it gets to be important to know about "ownership". If you fire a professor, do all the whiteboards go away? If your diagram is your only mode of communication with someone, you maybe oughtta go for that kind of detail. But if you're standing around talking and something like professors and whiteboards is pretty obvious, skip it.
Dependencies are interesting all by themselves to see how well decoupled things are and to eliminate cycles in packages. These are things you're likely to see in the code more readily than a diagram. I just made a script to take output from JDepend (free from Clarkware) and make input for Dot (free from Graphviz) so Dot can draw package dependency pictures. My "review the picture, change the code, regenerate the picture" cycle is just seconds. Because Eclipse makes it so easy to refactor, this is not something I'd spend a lot of time designing before I start.

[Lasse Koskela]

Wanna share the script with the rest of us, Stan?
I recently made a quick google for products that could visualize package dependencies and came out empty-handed.

[Ilja Preuss]

Originally posted by Lasse Koskela:
I recently made a quick google for products that could visualize package dependencies and came out empty-handed.

Take a look at http://metrics.sourceforge.net/ - it's quite cool!
And if you don't want to restrict your search to *free* tools, you didn't need to go a long way... http://www.javaranch.com/toolshed/thesmallworlds/thesmallworlds.jsp

[Stan James]

That looks like a neat metrics package. We're about to start on customization of a vendor package, and it would be neat to track some of these over time. The export to XML ought to allow that.
Here's the little script, for what it's worth. It's in REXX

/* */
trace n
   parse arg FileIn
   FileOut = 'c:\dot.in'
   'ERASE' FileOut
   IgnorePaths = 'com.saxman.util com.saxman.logger java. javax. junit.'
   IgnorePkgs  = 'com.saxman.sswiki com.saxman.sswiki.tests com.saxman.publisher'
   call write 'digraph g {'
   InList = 0
   do while lines(FileIn) > 0
      LineIn = linein(FileIn)
      select
         when left(LineIn, 10) = '- Package:' then
            parse var LineIn . '-' . PackageName .
         when LineIn = 'Depends Upon:' then
            InList = include(PackageName)
         when left(LineIn, 1) <> ' ' then
            InList = 0
         when LineIn = '' then
            nop
         when InList then
         do
            Pkg = strip(LineIn)
            if include(Pkg) then
               call writeLink PackageName , Pkg
         end
         otherwise
      end
   end
   call write '}'
   call lineout FileIn
   call lineout FileOut
exit
include:
procedure expose IgnorePaths IgnorePkgs
   parse arg Pkg
   if wordpos(Pkg, IgnorePkgs) > 0 then return 0
   do i = 1 to words(IgnorePaths)
      Path = word(IgnorePaths, i)
      if abbrev(Pkg, Path) then return 0
   end
return 1
writeLink:
   parse arg From, To
   call write clean(From) '->' clean(To)';'
return
write:
   call lineout FileOut, arg(1)
return
clean:
   parse arg token
   if abbrev(token, 'com.saxman.') then
      token = substr(token, length('com.saxman.')+1)
return translate( Token, '_', '.' )