Software Engineering Design &

modelling
Activity Diagram
Interaction Overview Diagram
 Introduction
 This chapter looks at how we can use the UML
 to model the details of the work that objects do, both
internally and in conjunction with other objects
 to model the details of computational processes

 Chapter outline: -
 Activity diagram
 Processes and threads

 Interaction Overview

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Activity Diagrams
 Topic Outline
 Activity diagram
 Definition
 Properties
 Activity and action
 Transition

 Object flow

 Modelling activity diagram

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 Introduction
 An activity diagram is used to model the
dynamic aspects of a system
 Activity diagrams can be attached to
 use cases
 communication

Activity diagrams are used to model use cases and

complex object workflows

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 Activity diagrams allow the readers to see the
system’s execution, and how it changes direction
based upon different conditions and stimuli.
 In this case, activity diagrams are used to model workflow
for use cases.
 For the purpose of this lecture, we will see how activity
diagrams can be used to take your use case to the next
level..
 In the context of use cases, activity diagrams are used
to: -
 elaborate
 identify the pre- and post-conditions
 discover
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 Definition
 An activity diagram is essentially a flowchart,
showing flow of control from activity to activity
 It involves
 modelling the sequential (and possibly concurrent) steps in
a computational process
 modelling the flow of an object as it moves from state to
state at different points in the flow of control
 Activity diagrams emphasize the flow of control from
activity to activity
 Whereas, interaction diagram emphasize the flow of control
from object to object

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 Properties
 Activity diagram commonly contains: -
 Activity states and action states
 Transitions

 Swimlanes

 Object flow

 may also contain notes and constraints

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Activity and action states
 An activity is something that an object performs on
an ongoing basis
 It is non-atomic, which means that it can be interrupted
 It can also be decomposed into other activities
 Activities ultimately result in some action
 An action is a set of executable computations that
results in a change in the state of the system, or the
return of a value to some objects, or both.
 It is atomic, meaning it cannot be interrupted
 It cannot be decomposed

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 It is assumed that an activity lasts for some duration
of time, whereas an action generally takes an
insignificant amount of time
 The UML notation is the same for an activity and
an action : a lozenge

Calculate shipping Update customer

Ship order activity
cost preferences

shipCost = countyCode
isFulfilled = True action
* subTotal

Example of some activities and actions associated with the Online Bookstore

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Transitions
 When the action or activity of a state completes,
flow of control passes immediately to the next
action or activity states
 Transitions are used to show the path from one
action or activity state to the next action or activity
state
 A flow of control has to start and end someplace
 this can be specified by an initial state (a solid ball) and a
stop state ( a solid ball inside a circle)

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 In the UML, a transition is presented as a simple
directed line
initial state

Activity / Action

transition

Activity / Action

stop state

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 A transition between activities or actions
can be modelled: -
 sequentially
 by using branching and merging

 by using forking and joining

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Branching and merging
 A branch is a decision point at which there are two
or more possible paths of flow of control
 Each possible path out of a branch has a guard
condition, which is a boolean expression that must be
evaluated to true in order for the branch to be taken.
 Optionally, an “else” branch can also be inserted to
account for a “none of the above” situation
 A guard condition is shown within a square bracket
near a path out of the branch
 Similar to conditional state

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 A merge is a point at which two or more branched paths
come together.
 The UML represents both a branch and a merge with a
diamond shape.
Compute subtotal

branching [ship outside of US]

Look up country code
[ship within of US]

shipCost = regionPercent
* subTotal shipCost = countryCode *
subTotal

merge
Example of branching and merging for
Compute new subtotal the scenario Process Customer’s Order of
the Online Bookstore
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Forking and Joining
 A fork is a splitting of a flow of control into two or
more flows of control, each of which operates
independently of, and concurrently with, the others.
 A join is a synchronization of two or more flows of
control into one flow
 In UML, the symbol that represents both forks and
joins is a long, thin, black rectangle called a
synchronization bar.

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Example of forking and joining associated with the Online Bookstore 17
Swim-lanes
 Group of activities and actions on an activity
diagram can be grouped together with the help of
vertical lines.
 In the UML, each group is called a swim-lane,
which is simply a lane down which you can track
activities and actions associated with a particular
part of an organization.
 Each swim-lane has a name unique within its diagram
 The boundaries are simply conceptual and transitions
may cross lanes

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 Receive order

Shipping Marketing Accounting

Retrieve books Update customer Post General
from inventory preferences Ledger entries

Calculate shipping
costs

swimlane Ship order swimlane

Example of swimlanes 19
Object Flow
 Objects may be involved in the flow of
control associated with an activity diagram.
 These objects may be specified in the
activity diagram by using object flows
 Object flows are simply dependencies that show
the details of how the object(s) involved in the
various activities/actions are specifically
affected

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 The UML provides two ways to show
objects within object flows, involving: -
 showing the new values for one or more
attributes, using the notation (attribute = value)
 showing a “state” value in square brackets

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An example of object flows
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 Modelling activity diagrams
 Activity diagrams can be used in two ways: -
 To model a workflow
 focus on activities as viewed by the actors that
collaborate with the system
 Workflows are used to visualize, specify, construct,
and document business processes that involve the
system being developed
 To model an operation
 used to model the details of a computation

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 Steps:
1. Identify the activities and actions involved (to be rendered
as activity and action states in the activity diagram)
2. Identify activities that can be grouped together in order to
form swimlanes
 For each swimlanes identified, give an appropriate name
3. Render the transitions that connect these activity and action
states
 Start with sequential flows
 Use branching and merging, or forking and joining, or both, if and
where necessary
4. Starting from the initial state, draw the activity diagrams
until the final state
 If there are important objects that are involved, include them in the
activity diagram

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 Receive order

Shipping Marketing Accounting

Retrieve books
from inventory Update customer Post General
Calculate shipping cost preferences Ledger entries

Compute subtotal
Look up country
[ship outside of US]
code
[ship within of US]

shipCost = regionPercent shipCost = countryCode

* subTotal * subTotal

Compute new subtotal

Example of an activity diagram associated with the

Ship order
Process Customer’s Order scenario of the Online
Bookstore 25
 A simple example
 Develop an activity diagram based on the following
narrative.
The purpose of the Open Access Insurance System is to
provide automotive insurance to car owners. Initially,
prospective customers fill out an insurance application,
which provides information about the customer and his
or her vehicles. This information is sent to an agent,
who sends it to various insurance companies to get
quotes for insurance. When the responses return, the
agent then determines the best policy for the type and
level of coverage desired and gives the customer a copy
of the insurance policy proposal and quote.

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 Steps:
1. Identify the activities and actions involved (to be rendered
as activity and action states in the activity diagram)
2. Identify activities that can be grouped together in order to
form swimlanes
 For each swimlanes identified, give an appropriate name
3. Render the transitions that connect these activity and action
states
 Start with sequential flows
 Use branching and merging, or forking and joining, or both, if and
where necessary
4. Starting from the initial state, draw the activity diagrams
until the final state
 If there are important objects that are involved, include them in the
activity diagram

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 Steps: -
1) Identify the activities and actions involved
The purpose of the Open Access Insurance System is to
provide automotive insurance to car owners. Initially,
prospective customers fill out an insurance application,
which provides information about the customer and his or
her vehicles. This information is sent to an agent, who
sends it to various insurance companies to get quotes for
insurance. When the responses return, the agent then
determines the best policy for the type and level of coverage
desired and gives the customer a copy of the insurance
policy proposal and quote.

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 Actions and activities identified
 Prospective customers fill out an insurance application
 Prospective customers fill out form
 This information is sent to an agent…
 The application is sent to an insurance agent
 … who sends it to various insurance companies to get
quotes for insurance
 Agent receives the application
 Agent sends it to various insurance companies to get quotes for
insurance
 Insurance companies come up with/develop quotes
 When the responses return …
 Agent receives the quotes
 … agent then determines the best policy
 The agent decides best policy
 … and gives the customer a copy of the insurance policy
proposal and quote.
 The agent sends the customer a copy of the insurance policy
proposal and quote.
 Customer receives proposal and quotes 29
2) Identify activities that can be grouped together in order to
form swimlanes. For each swimlanes identified, give an
appropriate name
Here, the activities and actions can be grouped together based on
who performed those activities/actions
 Prospective customers fill out application
 The application is sent to an insurance agent
 Agent receives the application
 Agent sends it to various insurance companies to get quotes for
insurance.
 Insurance companies come up with/develop quotes
 Agent receives the quotes,
 The agent decides best policy
 The agent sends the customer a copy of the insurance policy
proposal and quote.
 Customer receives proposal and quotes

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 Group of activities and actions according to swimlanes: -
 Prospective customer
 Prospective customers fill out application
 The application is sent to an insurance agent
 Customer receives proposal and quotes
 Insurance agent
 Agent receives the application
 Agent sends it to various insurance companies to get quotes for
insurance.
 Agent receives the quotes
 The agent decides best policy
 The agent sends the customer a copy of the insurance policy proposal
and quote.
 Insurance company
 Insurance companies come up with/develop quotes

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3) Render the transitions that connect these activity and
action states (sequential flows)
 Prospective customer
1. Fill out application
2. Send in application
9. Receives proposal and quotes
 Insurance agent
3. Receives application
4. Sends to insurance companies.
6. Receives quotes
7. Decides best policy
8. Sends policy to prospective customer.
 Insurance company
5. Develop quotes
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33
Case Study: On-Line
Bookstore
 On-line Bookstore is a web application that can be
accessed by the store’s registered customer, whereby
each customer can order books, review one or more
books sold in the book store, and sell used books to
other customers. Before performing any one of these
transactions, the customer must first log-in into the
system using their user id and password kept in their
account.
 Problem: Draw the activity diagrams for the above
system

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 On-line Bookstore System

Register

<<extend>>
(CustID) Check out

Customer Order books

<<include>>

<<include>>
Sell used books Log-in

<<include>>

Review books
Use Case Context
Diagram
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Register

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Log-in

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Order

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Check out

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Sell used books

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Process, threads &
active objects
 Introduction
 In the real-world, events may happen and things may
take place all at the same time (concurrently).
 Example: -
 In a high rise building, there exists quite a number of
tenants, each following their own agenda. But all must pass
through a limited set of entrances. All must share the same
bank of elevators. All must share the same electrical, water
and parking facilities. If they are to work together
optimally, they have to communicate and synchronize their
interactions properly.

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 Therefore, when we model a system of the
real-world, we must take into account its
process view.
 The process view encompasses the threads
and processes that form the system’s
concurrency and synchronization
mechanism.

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 Flow of control
 There are two types of flow: - sequential and
concurrent flow.
 In a purely sequential system, there is only one
flow of control.
 meaning that one thing, and one thing only, can take
place at a time
 Example: - When a sequential program starts, control is
rooted at the beginning of the program and operations
are dispatched one after another. No two operation can
occur at the same time.

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  In a concurrent system, there is more than one flow
of control
 meaning that more than one thing can take place at a time
 Here, there are multiple simultaneous flow of control,
each rooted at the head of an independent process or
thread
 Because more than one flow of control can take place at a
single time, one flow may interfere with another flow of
control. This may cause concurrent systems to fail.
 Therefore, there must exists a form of synchronization to
avoid this kind of situation.
 In the UML, each independent flow of control is
modelled as an active object.

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Active objects, processes and threads
 An active object is a process or thread that can
initiate control activity.
 A process is a heavyweight flow that can execute
concurrently with other processes
 meaning that it is a thing known to the operating system
and runs in an independent address space
 A thread is a lightweight flow that can execute
concurrently with other threads within the same
process
 meaning that it generally runs inside a process

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 An active object is an instance of an active class.
 An active class, therefore, is a class whose instances are
active objects.
 An active class represents an independent flow of
control, whereas a plain class embodies no such flow.
 An active class shares the same properties as all other
classes
 Active classes can be used to model common families of
processes and threads.
 Active objects can communicate with one another
by passing messages
 here, message passing must be extended to include
certain concurrency semantics in order to synchronize the
interactions among independent flows

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 Both active objects and active classes is
represented in the UML using the class box, but
with a thicker border.

Active class Active object

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 In a system with both active and passive objects,
there are four possible combinations of interaction
that must be considered: -
 A message may be passed from one passive object to
another
 A message may be passed (synchronously or
asynchronously) from one active object to another
 A message may be passed from an active object to a
passive object
 A message may be passed from a passive object to an
active object

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 By modelling concurrent systems with active objects, each
independent flow of control can be given a name.
 Furthermore, when an active object is created, the
associated flow of control is started; when the active object
is destroyed, the associated flow of control is terminated
 We can model the collaboration of active and passive
objects by using interaction diagrams.
 When we model interactions that involve multiple flows of
control, it is important to identify the process or thread that sent a
particular message.
 In the UML, we can distinguish one flow of control from another
by prefixing a message’s sequence number with the name of the
process or thread that sits at the root of the sequence.

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Example: -
c : CNNNewsFeed

s1 : postValue( ) c1 : postBreaingStory( )

s : StockTicker a1 : Analyst

s2 : postAlert( )
m1 : postValue( )

m : AlertManager t : TradingManager

i2 : postAlert( )

i : IndexWatcher a2 : Analyst
i1 : postValue( )

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