Building an Impact Diagram
Creating an impact diagram
To access an impact impact diagram of a project:
1. Right-click the projectto open its pop-up menu.
2. Select New > Diagram.
The diagram creation dialog box appears.
3. Select Project Impact Diagram and confirm that the Diagram Initialization check box is selected before clicking Create.
The impact diagram opens. The current project is positioned in the diagram.
Adding an application in an impact diagram
The main components impacted by the project are placed in the diagram. These can be applications, services, databases or actors.
To add an application in a project impact diagram
1. Select the
Application button
and click in the diagram.
The add application dialog box appears:
2. Click the arrow at the right of the Name box and select Propose in the drop-down list.
The list of applications accessible from the current library appears.
3. Select the required application.
4. Click OK.
The application appears in the diagram.
Defining project impact on an application
To specify that a project impacts an application:
1. Click the
System Impact button
.
2. Click the project to position the impact and, holding the left mouse button down, draw a link to the application.
3. Release the mouse button.
The link representing project impact on the application appears in the diagram.
To associate a summary text describing nature of the impact:
1. Right click the impactto open its pop-up menu and select Properties.
The properties window opens.
2. Specify the name of the impact in the Local Name box.
3. Click OK.
The name of the impact appears in the diagram.
In an impact diagram, you can create impact links from a project, application, service, actor, database or entity.
A database or entity can only have an impact on a project, application or service.
You can similarly add databases
or entities
in your diagram.
To show the corresponding buttons, click the "Views and Details" button
in the diagram toolbar and select views "Entities" and "Databases".
Specifying entity access mode
The entity is a stereotype enabling characterization of passive classes that do not themselves generate interactions. They can participate in in several use cases and generally outlive any single interaction. They represent objects shared between the different actors that handle them.
You can specify the type of access of the different impact diagram components to an entity (CRUD).
CRUD is an abbreviation of Create, Read, Update, Delete.
To specify that an entity is used by an application:
1. Click the reel button
in the insert toolbar.
2. Click the entity to position the link and, holding the left mouse button down, draw a link to the application.
3. Release the mouse button.
The link representing access to the entity by the application appears in the diagram.
To define the type of access of the application to the entity:
1. Right click the link to open its pop-up menu and select Properties.
The properties window opens.
2. Select the Characteristics tab and enter access types by selecting "Y" or "N" in the drop-down menus. The CRUD Value box is completed from letters defining the access type.
3. Click OK.
The CRUD value is displayed on the link in the diagram.
