Akka. How to illustrate actors in UML?

Question

How I can illustrate Akka actors in UML diagrams? Especially how to illustrate messages passed between actors? Any example will be fine. Thanks.

Augustus

example – Sur

Answer 1

Be careful, Akka actors and UML actors mean two very different things. For UML, an actor is something (a human or another system) interacting with the system. For Akka, it is an active object.

So, you can use either, a sequence diagram if you want to illustrate the interaction during the time, or communication diagram if you need only to illustrate messages order.

Pondicherry

Answer 2

Aka Actors are self-contained entities with their own lifecycle. Akka actors interact by sending each other messages.

Replace "Akka Actors" with "Objects" in the above statement and you have a pretty good description of the OO model underpinning UML. So you can use Class Diagrams, State Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams etc. to model Actor-based systems.

You could make various refinements depending on your needs. For example, each class that represents an actor is <<active>>. Or you could go further and introduce an <<Actor>> stereotype. Depends on your audience & model purpose.

hth.

Pseudoscope