Designing CanSend/CanReceive actions

Chapter 5 Building a Collaborative Business Process Model

Designing CanSend/CanReceive actions

Flow objects define Business Documents and signals exchanged during the Business Transaction. Consequently each flow can be generated as CanSend or CanReceive element depending on whether the party is the Requester or the Receiver of the message.

The following extended attributes (accessible from the Extended Attributes tab of the flow property sheet) apply to the flow. They represent mainly three technical parameters: actions, delivery channels and the message packaging used by the sender and the receiver. Since these parameters can be different in the sender and the receiver side, PowerDesigner associates two extended attributes to each parameter.

Name	Internal code	Description
Action ID	ReceiverActionID, SenderActionID	ID of the Receive/Send action
Action name	ReceiverActionName, SenderActionName	Name of the Receive/Send action
Channel ID	ReceiverChannelID, SenderChannelID	Delivery channel used by the Receiver/Sender to receive/send the message. The value references the name of a resource object having <<DeliveryChannel>> stereotype
Package ID	ReceiverPackageID, SenderPackageID	Id of the Message packaging used by the receiver/sender. This packaging is not defined by a resource object but will be generated as Packaging template. Receiver and Sender often use the same Packaging
Is authenticated, Is confidential, Is tamper proof	isAuthenticated, isConfidential, isTamperProof	Attributes defined only on the flows representing an acknowledgement

The Action identification parameters Sender/ Receiver Action ID and Name are not required. Indeed PowerDesigner generates a default ID by combining the name of the Requesting or Responding business activity and a default string.

This default string can be:

Send or Receive for the business document (Purchase Order Request Action_Send_ID)
ReceiptAck or AcceptanceAck for business signals (Purchase Order Request Action_Receive_ReceiptAck_ID)

The Sender/Receiver message packaging ID is the string that represents the reference to one packaging element in the CPA. PowerDesigner uses this ID to generate a default packaging template.

The Sender/Receiver channel ID references a detailed delivery channel that should have been defined by a resource object having <<Delivery Channel>> as stereotype.