Analyzing Interactions › Analyzing Process Logic › Preparing for Process Logic Analysis

Preparing for Process Logic Analysis

You may specify process logic for each elementary process that will be supported by the business system to be developed. This is especially useful with a complex process, one that interacts with many entity types or that performs iterative or complex calculation. It is also useful for a process whose performance is time-critical or is likely to make exceptional demands on technical facilities, for example, using a large number of entities during a process execution.

No information views or expected effects are required before beginning this analysis, since they will be defined or reviewed as necessary. Typically the expected effects have been defined for each elementary process.

Other indications of the data that may be needed, established, or changed may be deduced from any pre-conditions and post-conditions identified during process dependency analysis. See the chapter "Analyzing Activities."

Where the process logic is reasonably straightforward, it may be possible to shortcut process logic analysis steps by using CA Gen automatic action diagram generation. This is called stereotyping.

Automatic action diagram generation allows you to build an Action Diagram to either create, update, delete, read, or list entities of the type selected. This is typically a primary entity type, as in Step 1 of Analyzing Process Logic.

Stereotyping leads you through a dialog in which you select actions on relationships and related entities. This process is described in detail in the toolset documentation. Expected effects on entity types are automatically recorded based on your decisions. The resulting action diagrams can then be selected as operations on the entity type, which is shown in the Data Model Browser.

When the process logic is more complex, stereotyping can be used to establish a starting point for the development of entity action views and action diagrams after the initial formulation of process logic is complete. See Step 4 Determine Actions on Attributes and Relationships section in this chapter for more information.

CA Gen can also generate an action block for a process based on its recorded expected effects on entity types, but stereotyping is the technique assumed here.