Object Oriented Analysis & Design

Lecture 19 : Activity Diagram

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani

BIT DURG
 Activity Diagram
• Activity diagram is another important diagram in UML to describe
dynamic aspects of the system.
• Activity diagram is basically a flow chart to represent the flow
form one activity to another activity.
• The activity can be described as an operation of the system. So
the control flow is drawn from one operation to another.
• This flow can be sequential, branched or concurrent.
• Activity diagrams deals with all type of flow control by using
different elements like fork, join etc.

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Activity Diagram
• Activity Diagrams describe –
1. how activities are coordinated to provide a service
2. the service can be at different levels of abstraction
3. the events needed to achieve some operation, particularly where
the operation is intended to achieve a number of different things
that require coordination
4. how the events in a single use case relate to one another
5. in particular, use cases where activities may overlap and require
coordination
6. how a collection of use cases coordinate to create a workflow for
an organization
Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG
 Activity Diagram (Usage)
1. Model business workflows
2. Identify candidate use cases, through the examination of
business workflows
3. Identify pre- and post-conditions for use cases
4. Model workflows between/within use cases
5. Model complex workflows in operations on objects
6. Model in detail complex activities in a high level activity
diagram

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Activities
• An Activity is the process being modelled
• Activities are the vertices of the diagram
• An Activity is a unit of work that needs to be carried out
• Any Activity takes time
• An activity is like a state where the criterion for leaving the state
is the completion of the activity

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Actions
• An Action is a step in the overall activity
• The work can be documented as Actions in the activity
• There are four ways in which an action can be triggered
1. On Entry – as soon as the activity starts
2. Do – during lifetime of the activity
3. On Event – in response to an event
4. On Exit – just before the activity completes

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Transitions
• A Transition is the movement from one activity to another, the change
from one state to another, or the movement between a state and an
activity in either direction
• Transitions: unlabeled arrows from one activity to the next
• Transitions take place when one activity is complete and the next can
commence

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Activity Edges
• The flow of an activity is shown using arrowed lines called edges
or paths
• Control-flow Transitions indicate the order of action states
• Object-flow Transitions indicate that an action state inputs or
outputs an object
• Time could be a factor in an activity
• Time events are drawn with an hourglass symbol

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Token
• Conceptually, UML models information moving along an edge as
a token (e.g., real data, an object or focus of control)
• Each edge may have
1. a weight associated with it that indicates how many tokens must be
available before the tokens are presented to the target action
2. a guard condition

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Activity Nodes
• UML 2.0 defines several types of
activity nodes to model different types
of information flow
1. Parameters nodes
2. Object nodes
3. (input or output) Pins - special
notation for object nodes;
exception pins, value pins

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Initial and Final Nodes
• An initial node is the starting
point for an activity
• Two types of final nodes:
activity final and flow final
• An activity final node
terminates the entire activity
• A flow final node terminates
a path through an activity,
but not the entire activity
• It is possible to have multiple
initial nodes and final nodes
Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG
 Initial and Final Nodes
• Warnings: be careful when using
a flow final node after a fork. As
soon as the activity final node is
reached, all other actions in the
activity (including the ones
before the final flow node)
terminate. If you want all forked
actions to finish, make sure to
add a join.

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Fork
• A transition can be split into multiple paths and multiple paths
combined into a single transitions by using a synchronization bar.
• A synchronization may have many in-arcs from activities and a
number of out-arcs to activities.
• A fork is where the paths split.
• On an occurrence of the transition all the activities with arcs from the
transition are initiated.
• A fork node splits the current flow through an activity into multiple
concurrent flows.
• In a detailed design model, you can use forks to represent multiple
processes or multiple threads in a program.
Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG
 Join
• A join is where the paths
meet.
• The bar represents
synchronization of the
completion of those
activities with arcs into the
transition.
•A join synchronizes
multiple flows of an
activity back to a single
flow of execution.
Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG
 Decision and Merge Points
• A decision point shows where the exit transition from a state or
activity may branch in alternative directions depending on a
condition.
• A decision involves selecting one control-flow transition out of many
control flow transitions based on a condition.
• Each branched edge contains a guard condition.
• Guard expressions (inside []) label the transitions coming out of a
branch.
• A merge point brings together alternate flows into a single output
flow - note that it does not synchronize multiple concurrent flows.

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 States
• A state in an activity diagram is a point where some event needs to
take place before activity can continue
• Activities and States are similar
1. States carry out actions as activities do
2. Activities need to complete their actions before exiting
3. States are used to imply waiting, not doing
• It is possible to show an object changing states as it flows through an
activity

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Start and End States
• The Start state is the entry point to a flow
• There can be several End states – multiple End states can be used
to indicate different follow-on processes from a particular process
• Start and End states can have actions too
• Malformed diagrams – it is possible to form ill-formed diagrams
that require multiple activations of activities or can allow
deadlock.

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Swimlanes
• Swimlanes (or activity partitions) indicate where activities take
place.
• Swimlanes can also be used to identify areas at the technology
level where activities are carried out.
• Swimlanes allow the partition an activity diagram so that parts of
it appear in the swimlane relevant to that element in the
partition.

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Swimlanes
• Partitions may be constructed on the basis of:
1. the class and actor doing the activity
2. Partitioning by class and actor can help to identify new
associations that have not been documented in the class
model
3. the use case the activity belongs to
4. Partitioning by use cases can help document how use cases
interact

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

Swimlanes

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Sending and Receiving Signals
• In activity diagrams, signals represent interactions with external
participants
• Signals are messages that can be sent or received
• A receive signal has the effect of waking up an action in your activity
diagram
• Send signals are signals sent to external participants.
• Note that combining send and receive signals results in behavior
similar to synchronous call, or a call that waits for a response.
• It is common to combine send and receive signals in activity diagrams,
because you often need a response to the signal you sent.
Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG
Sending and Receiving Signals

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

Sending and Receiving Signals

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 How to construct Activity Diagrams?
1. Finding system Actors, Classes and use cases
2. Identifying key scenarios of system use cases
3. Combining the scenarios to produce comprehensive workflows
described using activity diagrams
4. Where significant object behavior is triggered by a workflow,
adding object flows to the diagrams
5. Where workflows cross technology boundaries, using
swimlanes to map the activities
6. Refining complicated high level activities similarly, nested
activity diagrams
Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG
 Activity Diagrams Example
Draw an activity diagram for order management system. There are
4 activity which can be described as
1. Send order by the customer
2. Receipt of the order
3. Confirm order
4. Dispatch order
After receiving the order request condition checks are performed
to check if it is normal or special order. After the type of order is
identified dispatch activity is performed and that is marked as the
termination of the process.

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

Activity Diagrams Example

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Activity Diagrams Example
Draw an activity diagram
for a use case “Withdraw
money from a bank
account through an
ATM”.

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

 Activity Diagrams Example
Draw an activity diagram for a “Parcel Shipping” Process.

Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG

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Dinesh Kumar Bhawnani, BIT DURG