Activity Properties

You can modify an object's properties from its property sheet. To open an activity property sheet, double-click its diagram symbol or its Browser entry in the Activities folder. The following sections detail the property sheet tabs that contain the properties most commonly entered for activities.

The General Tab contains the following properties:

Property

Description

Name

Specifies the name of the item, which should be clear and meaningful, and should convey the item's purpose to non-technical users.

Code

Specifies the technical name of the object, which is used for generating code or scripts.

Comment

Descriptive comment for the object.

Stereotype

Extends the semantics of the object beyond the core UML definition.

Organization unit

Specifies the organization unit (see Organization Units (OOM)) linked to the activity and also allows you to assign the Committee Activity value (see Displaying a Committee Activity) to a decomposed activity to graphically show the links between organization units designed as swimlanes and sub-activities. A Committee Activity is an activity realized by more than one organization unit.

You can click the Ellipsis button beside the Organization unit list to create a new organization unit or click the Properties tool to display its property sheet.

Composite status

Specifies whether the activity is decomposed into sub-activities. You can choose between:
  • Atomic Activity – (default) The activity does not contain sub-activities

  • Decomposed Activity – the activity can contain sub-activities. A Sub-Activities tab is displayed in the property sheet to list these sub-activities, and a sub-diagram is created below the activity in the Browser to display them.

If you revert the activity from Decomposed to Atomic status, then any sub-activities that you have created will be deleted.

Action Tab

The Action tab defines the nature, the type and the duration of an action that an activity executes. It contains the following properties:

Property

Description

Action type

Specifies the kind of action that the activity executes. For more information, see Specifying action types.

[action object]

Depending on the action type you choose, an additional field may be displayed, allowing you to specify an activity, classifier, attribute, event, expression, operation, or variable upon which the action acts. You can use the tools to the right of the list to create an object, browse the available objects or view the properties of the currently selected object.

Pre-Conditions / Actions / Post-Conditions

These sub-tabs provide a textual account of how the action is executed. For example, you can write pseudo code or information on the program to execute.

Duration

Specifies the estimated or statistic duration to execute the action. This information is for documentation purposes only; estimate on the global duration is not computed.

Timeout

Zero by default. If the value is not set to zero, it means that a timeout exception occurs if the execution of the activation takes more than the specified timeout limit. You can type any alphanumeric value in the Timeout box (example: 20 seconds).

Input Parameters and Output Parameters Tabs

These tabs list the input and output parameters required by the activity (see Specifying Activity Parameters).

Sub-Activities Tab

This tab is displayed only if the Composite status of the activity is set to Decomposed, and lists its sub-activities.