How big are collaboration diagrams supposed to be?

[Sasmito Adibowo]

Hi All..

I wonder how much details are supposed to be in the Part II sequence
diagrams? My unfinished sequence diagram for the "prepare for itinerary" use
case already spans 7x3 A4 pages and is beginning to be hard to navigate in.
I've included most of the significant participants in the diagram, all of
the Transfer Objects, Data Access Objects, EJBs, Bean Delegates, Service
Locators, JSPs and then some. Am I being too detailed in the diagram or are
they supposed to be large?

TIA.

[samou Mouloud]

A readable sequence diagram must not have more than 15-20 objects...Use components or stereotyped subsystems instead of simple objects:
sample: "<<UI>>", you can list your jsps or other objects in the text.
Mouloud

[Ravi Dhanum]

Hello all,

Are you including only the happy path (Basic Flow), or are you including the Basic Flow and all Alternatre Flows?

Thanks in advance.

-Ravi

[Sasmito Adibowo]

The "change itinerary" sequence diagram has only 17 objects (lifelines, including the Client actor), but it is already very big in my opinion. But it spans 5x2 A4 portrait pages (using 8-10pt Arial fonts) already. I've included the JSPs as object, the front controller, as well as the transfer objects involved.

The "prepare itinerary" sequence diagram is even worse.

Since the example in Mark Cade's book also include the JSPs and their controller, I opt to do the same in the assignment. But then this raise the question, should I also draw the same diagram for the GUI clients? The interaction from the point of the UI's controller backwards will be mostly the same, being different only in the request/response paradigm of HTTP to the more interactive GUI-based systems.

My question is this now:
- Should I draw two sequence diagrams for every use case, for each type of client? Are GUI vs JSP clients that different?
- Would it be appropriate to leave out the transfer objects in the sequence diagrams?
- Should I leave out the Home interface of EJBs in the process of creating a bean instance in the sequence diagrams?

[Yong How, Lim]

If your GUI and JSP has the same operations, then you will only need to draw one sequence diagram.

I dont think it is appropriate to leave out the Transfer Object if it is somehow involve in the operation.

IMHO, stuff like Home Interface can be left out as it a known fact of how it will work and there is no variation to it.

HTH

[Pradeep Shekade]

I had prepared two sets of sequence diagrams. One showing the interaction in the web components i.e. JSP==>Action Objects==>Business Delegates. And the other showing BD ==> Business Objects ==> DAO...

This way I was able to show more details and improve clarity but then the number of sequence diagrams increased...