The Unified Modeling Language User Guide, 2nd Edition

Chapter 20. Activity Diagrams

In this chapter

• Modeling a workflow

• Modeling an operation

• Forward and reverse engineering

Sequence diagrams, communication diagrams, state diagrams, and use case diagrams also model the dynamic aspects of systems. Sequence and communication diagrams are discussed in Chapter 19; state diagrams are discussed in Chapter 25; use case diagrams are discussed in Chapter 18; actions are discussed in Chapter 16.

Activity diagrams are one of the five diagrams in the UML for modeling the dynamic aspects of systems. An activity diagram is essentially a flowchart, showing flow of control from activity to activity. Unlike a traditional flowchart, an activity diagram shows concurrency as well as branches of control.

You use activity diagrams ...