UML: modeling an activity that creates/changes other activities

Question

Let's say I am to build a behavioral model of some organization: in particular, I am to build a bunch of activity diagrams that describe all those activities that take place in the organization (activities like "bidding", "order fulfillment", "shipping", etc.).

Now, one of the key activities in the organization is the one that includes establishing and maintaining all the activities themselves. If you wanted to show the object flows while modeling that activity, how exactly would you depict such inputs/outputs as activities?

For example, would it be semantically correct to use objects that are instances of the Activity class from UML meta-model? (The UML modeling tool that I'm using does not give me such an option. Is it because the tool is ignorant or because I am not supposed to include instances of classes from meta-model into my model?)

Answer 1

An activity parameter node might be what you're looking for. This shape represents an activity that calls actions in the current activity diagram. You connect this shape to an input node or output node in the current activity.

You can create UML activity diagrams that support this kind of node in VS 2010 Ultimate. For more info, see the following topic in the RC documentation:

UML Activity Diagrams: Reference (scroll to the bottom): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd409360%28VS.100%29.aspx

18: Activity Parameter Node: An object node through which data can be received or produced by the activity. Used when the activity represented by the diagram is called from another activity, or when the diagram describes an operation or function.

Feel free to post questions in the VS 2010 Architecture & Modeling Tools forum at http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsarch/threads.