

Steps for Creating Collaboration Diagrams The association must be navigable in that direction.The receiver must understand the message.The message is directed from sender to receiver.In collaboration diagrams, a message is shown as a labeled arrow placed near a link. Message flows are attached to links, see Messages.Ī message is a communication between objects that conveys information with the expectation that activity will ensue.A link can be an instance of an association, or it can be anonymous, meaning that its association is unspecified.An object interacts with, or navigates to, other objects through its links to these objects.In collaboration diagrams, a link is shown as a solid line between two objects. A link is a relationship among objects across which messages can be sent.Links connect objects and actors and are instances of associations and each link corresponds to an association in the class diagram One actor will be the initiator of the use case.If you have several actor instances in the same diagram, try keeping them in the periphery of the diagram. Normally an actor instance occurs in the collaboration diagram, as the invoker of the interaction. The objects can be unnamed, but you should name them if you want to discriminate different objects of the same class.Normally you create a collaboration diagram with objects first and specify their classes later. There may be more than one object of a class.Each object in the collaboration is named and has its class specified.You can use objects in collaboration diagrams in the following ways: Notations of Collaboration Diagram ObjectsĪn object is represented by an object symbol showing the name of the object and its class underlined, separated by a colon: Messages sent during the same call have the same decimal prefix but suffixes of 1, 2, etc. Each message in a collaboration diagram has a sequence number.Support the identification of objects (hence classes) that participate in use cases.Model alternative scenarios within use cases or operations that involve the collaboration of different objects and interactions.Capture interactions that show the messages passing between objects and roles within the collaboration.Model mechanisms within the architectural design of the system.Model collaborations between objects or roles that deliver the functionalities of use cases and operations.So, here are some use cases that we want to create a collaboration diagram for: In addition, it is difficult to show additional descriptive information such as timing, decision points, or other unstructured information that can be easily added to the notes in a sequence diagram. However, if the number of objects and messages grows, the diagram becomes increasingly hard to read. Specifically, they tend to be better suited to depicting simpler interactions of smaller numbers of objects. Sequence diagrams and collaboration diagrams express similar information, but show it in different ways.īecause of the format of the collaboration diagram, they tend to better suited for analysis activities (see Activity: Use-Case Analysis). Unlike a sequence diagram, a collaboration diagram shows the relationships among the objects. Objects collaborate by communicating (passing messages) with one another in order to work together.

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Learn UML Faster, Better and EasierĪre you looking for a Free UML tool for learning UML faster, easier and quicker? Visual Paradigm Community Edition is a UML software that supports all UML diagram types. They are the primary source of information used to determining class responsibilities and interfaces. Along with sequence diagrams, collaboration are used by designers to define and clarify the roles of the objects that perform a particular flow of events of a use case. Collaboration diagrams ( known as Communication Diagram in UML 2.x) are used to show how objects interact to perform the behavior of a particular use case, or a part of a use case.
