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. 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. They are the primary source of information used to determining class responsibilities and interfaces.
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Unlike a sequence diagram, a collaboration diagram shows the relationships among the objects. Sequence diagrams and collaboration diagrams express similar information, but show it in different ways.
Because of the format of the collaboration diagram, they tend to better suited for analysis activities (see Activity: Use-Case Analysis). Specifically, they tend to be better suited to depicting simpler interactions of smaller numbers of objects. However, if the number of objects and messages grows, the diagram becomes increasingly hard to read. 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. So, here are some use cases that we want to create a collaboration diagram for:
An object is represented by an object symbol showing the name of the object and its class underlined, separated by a colon:
Object_name : class_name
You can use objects in collaboration diagrams in the following ways:
Normally an actor instance occurs in the collaboration diagram, as the invoker of the interaction. If you have several actor instances in the same diagram, try keeping them in the periphery of the diagram.
Links connect objects and actors and are instances of associations and each link corresponds to an association in the class diagram
Links are defined as follows:
A message is a communication between objects that conveys information with the expectation that activity will ensue. In collaboration diagrams, a message is shown as a labeled arrow placed near a link.
You can have objects and actor instances in collaboration diagrams, together with links and messages describing how they are related and how they interact. The Receive Deposit Item in the Recycling-Machine System diagram shown below describes what takes place in the participating objects, in terms of how the objects communicate by sending messages to one another. You can make a collaboration diagram for each variant of a use case’s flow of events.
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