ProductsUModelUML Application Flow DiagramsUML Activity Diagrams

Altova UModel® 2009 lets you easily chart the flow of actions and illustrate the decision points in your project design.

The UML 2 specification greatly expanded the features and scope of activity diagrams beyond their earlier classification as a special case of state diagrams. Today, activity diagrams can be thought of as flow charts for the 21st century, and UML modelers use activity diagrams to describe:

• Business rules
• Single use cases
• Complex series of multiple use cases
• Processes with decision points and alternate flows
• Operations that take place in parallel
• Software flows and logic control structures

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You’ll find the features of UModel® 2009 to be advantageous and versatile as you draw UML activity diagrams to chart the dynamic behavior of your project.

When you create a new activity diagram, open an existing one, or click to bring an open activity diagram to the front, UModel® 2009 offers a special activity diagram toolbar for quick access to all the elements you’ll need. At the same time, UModel® 2009 automatically closes the toolbar for any other diagram type to keep the program control area uncluttered and maximize your drawing region.

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Note that the toolbar includes fork nodes, join nodes, and activity partitions in both horizontal and vertical orientation so you can select the element you need in a single step. You can even choose to hide the toolbar and choose new elements from a right-click context menu instead.

UModel® 2009 offers robust options to customize your activity diagrams for the requirements of the project at hand or to fit your personal modeling style. For instance, separate toolbar buttons let you insert horizontal or vertical swim lanes (activity partitions), but if you start with one orientation and decide you would rather use the other, the flip fast editing button changes the orientation so you don’t have to start over from scratch.

Using the right-click context menu, you can add new partitions and even convert a one dimensional activity partition to two dimensions if you choose.

Other UML activity diagram elements also have special fast editing buttons and entry helpers. Timing elements that indicate signals sent and received have special mirror handles, and text in guards is automatically created with brackets.

If you’re designing a real-time system and need to explicitly indicate precise information about synchronous, concurrent, and asynchronous flows, or operations that could be iterative or streaming, you’ll find the specialized diagram elements for structured activities, activity parameters, expansion regions and expansion nodes conveniently grouped in the UModel® 2009 activity diagram toolbar.

If you want to formally indicate the semantics of activity initializations, the input pin, output pin, and value pin elements are similarly organized. When you place a pin, the Properties dialog offers pull-down menus to set all its characteristics.

Whether you are an analyst assigned to diagram business rules, or a developer who needs to document all the subtle feature of an embedded system, UModel® 2009 makes it easy to draw UML 2 activity diagrams that communicate your designs accurately and effectively.

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Try UModel® 2009 for yourself – download a free 30-day trial today!