With Activity Diagrams Business Process Modeling and Use Case Specification

Activity diagrams are integrated several different ways in the UML tool objectiF: They serve business process modeling on one side and use case specification in detail, on the other. No matter which context you use activity diagrams in: with objectiF, you can be sure of the traceability and consistency of results from the business process to the implemented class.

From Business Process to Code: Traceable and Consistent with objectiF

objectiF creates a direct reference between a business process' activities, the requirements definition and the implementation. This gives you a permanent roadmap from the business processes to the application and makes the way traceable. So you can react to new or changed business processes quickly and effectively. And when you use activity diagrams – as always with objectiF – you can be sure that whenever you make a change that you are still working with a wholly consistent system.

Business processes are modeled in an activity diagram. In addition to simple and branched transitions between activities, you can also model how parallel control flows break apart (fork) and merge together (join) with decision and synch bars.

Who's responsible for carrying out an activity? Swimlanes – i.e. areas of responsibility – can be assigned to an actor, class or package. The name of the actor, class or package is then used as the name of the swimlane – with automatically ensured consistency – should you change the name of the actor, class or package later on. You can also create activities via the context menu of an actor or class. This just has the effect that the activity is created directly into the actor or class' area of responsibility right from the beginning.

On your way to a finished IT application, you will want to derive use cases with tool support from the business process which you modeled with the help of activity diagrams. You can easily navigate along the relationships created between the activities and use cases with a click in objectiF. And vice versa: You can also find out which activities every single use case is based on in objectiF whenever you want.

Navigate quickly between activities and use cases via context menus.

objectiF offers you two additional possibilities for if you want to describe an activity in even more detail: Simply use the prestructured Word template for a textual description. Or refine activities with a special activity diagram. You will find the menu heading Create Subactivity to do this in every activity's context menu.

The execution of an action can be set in relation to an object: Either the object is responsible for triggering the action or the object itself is influenced by the action. You can represent this connection to the activity diagram with help of the action's object flow. If a suitable class already exists in objectiF, you can assign an object in an activity diagram to this class when creating it. As you would expect, objectiF consistently maintains the assignment.

With objectiF from Business Process to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)

In the future, the way from modeling a business process in an activity diagram to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) will be even shorter. microTOOL is currently developing a solution which will let you add technical information to the business logic guidelines in your business process model. You will then be able to generate these guidelines directly from the business model into XML code for Microsoft's BizTalk Server 2004, for example. You can generate the framework for the process (orchestration), the web services and the document structures from the UML model in objectiF. The advantages of the high abstraction level of the UML remain intact. Below, you can already get an impression of how it works:

From business process modeling to XML code: Model a class diagram for the objects in the activity diagram and generate XML code. You can create web services via the activities in the diagram or assign existing ones.

Activities are Made Visible in the User Interface with objectiF

If you work with objectiF Visual Studio .NET Edition, you can set the activities of your activity diagram in relation to the dialogs of the user interface being developed. A user interface class can be assigned to each activity. When you assign it, objectiF automatically sets the stereotype of the activity to «User Interface». So you can see in an instant which of the activities in an activity diagram have a user interface class. You can open an assigned user interface class in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET directly from within objectiF for editing.

The activities are visible in the user interface. You can reach a dialog which has been assigned to an activity directly in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET from within objectiF.

Describe Your Use Cases More Precisely with objectiF

In objectiF, activity diagrams also fulfill yet another function: They can be used to describe use cases – in addition to the other possibilities of textual descriptions and generating screen prototypes. This extends the instruments available to you, the objectiF user, for use case analysis, i.e. for defining system requirements. The road to success is already mapped out during requirements definition, after all.

Why not give code generation with objectiF a try: Simply design a class diagram with a few classes and transfer the generated code to Visual Studio .NET or Eclipse. The functionally complete Personal Edition of objectiF which can be used for an unlimited period of time is available for you to download here:

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