A diagram that is very useful during analysis is called an activity diagram. It is a diagram that can be used to show the dynamics of a system. They are very much like the old flow charts that you may be familiar with. They are used to model the flow of control between activities in a system. The benefits of an activity diagram are that parallel processing and decision-making activities can be modeled. Activity diagrams can be used to model the flow between use cases, the activities within a use case and also the activities within a particular operation. The UML notation elements for activity diagrams are as follows:
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Start State
The start state is the begin point of a workflow
Activity
An activity represents a particular behavior in the workflow
Transition
Transitions model the passing of control from one activity to another.
Decision
A decision models a point in the workflow where a branch condition may take place based on some criteria.
End State
The end state is the final end point of a workflow
Activity diagrams are useful where the behavior of some process needs to be better understood or explained. Activity diagrams convey a lot of information that is easily understood. A simple example will better illustrate the use of an activity diagram. The use case Rent Video can be modeled to show the activities of a customer finding and renting a video.
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