A quick look at accessing an Operation on a Transition or ActivityEdge guard with Alf vs ALH

Sweet! Direct UML-friendly access to an Operation, even when it is owned by a deeply nested child part. So how might this look if we instead used the vendor-specific Action Language Helper (ALH) API directly on the guard?

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Mmmm. Not quite as elegant:


[ALH.callOperation(ALH.getValue(ALH.getValue(self,"dialer"),"number"),"isValid")]

To avoid all of that clumsy navigation we could of course encapsulate it in an OpaqueBehavior and assign it as the 'method' of an additional Operation isNumberValid() on the Controller class, and then slightly less awkwardly access that:


[ALH.callOperation(self,"isNumberValid")]

But it's kind of "cheating", or at best not as elegant as with Action Language for Foundational UML (Alf). Nevertheless, ALH can handle a wide range of cases that the other basic action scripting languages can't.

— END OF TRAIL —

There's only so much that can be shown using slides, so don't miss the matching screencast video that shows it all brought to life using simulation in Magic Model Analyst^® (Cameo Simulation Toolkit^®) Screencast: Tutorial: UML/SysML: StateMachines vs Activities: Operation-driven Transition case study - UML-2.5.1 'Figure 14.7 Composite State with two States' in Cameo Simulation Toolkit

You may wish to visit one of these tutorials next:

TRAIL: The SysML-1.6 Hybrid SUV sample and specification diagrams in MagicDraw/Cameo (with annotations) [UNDERGOING UPDATE to SysML1.7]

TRAIL: Webel's ultimate guide to Systems Modeling Language (v1) with MagicDraw/Cameo

HOWTO invoke an operation as a Transition guard in Cameo Simulation Toolkit

TRAIL: UML Behavior: Activities and Actions

Visit more Systems Modeling Language v1 (SysML^®) tutorial trails here.

Visit also these screencast tutorial videos

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