Using Entity Framework diagram or class diagram's classes in my own diagram

Question

Hi,

I've designed my own model to define the states of an activity to be used in Web Application development.
In the model, I have:

• Actor SwimLane: defines each actor's role in the activity
• Manual State Element: defines the manual working state for each Actor (ie: getting the request signed form from customer)
• Application State: defines the functional state in my application which is presented as web from (ie: fill the register form in RegisterCustomer.aspx)
• Element connectors
• Class SwimLane: this is the area which I can define my classes and connect each PageState to these classes to show the relation
• Class Element: defines the domain objects in my application
• Other Activity Diagram Elements (ie: Join, Fork,...)

When I create and define a Activity, I should define all the classes in my diagram. I do this by copy/paste between Activity Diagrams.
Also, I'm using Entity Framework.

Here is my question:
Is there any solution to use Entity Framework generaed model's classes or VS class diagram in my own diagram?

Thanks

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Amir Pournasserian

Answer 1

Hi Amir,

Here are some suggestions:

• If you have VS Ultimate and you have downloaded Feature Pack 1, you can drag VS classes into a UML class diagram (which is not the same as the .NET class diagram). You can read that as described in How to Read a UML Model in Program Code and How to Navigate the UML Model. If you want to paste or drag from the UML class diagram into your DSL, you could use the technique described near the end of How to add a drag-and-drop handler.
• Alternatively, you could read program code using System.CodeDom.

Does this help?

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- Alan -MSFT

Answer 2

Thanks,

I'm not a member and I have downloaded "Visualization and Modeling Feature Pack Runtime". Is there anyway to do this myself?

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Amir Pournasserian

Answer 3

You need VS Ultimate to get UML diagrams; the Feature Pack is an add-in for that. The FP Runtime by itself doesn't provide the ability to create UML diagrams from code.

I think it might be easiest to read the program code into your model using System.CodeDom.

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- Alan -MSFT