In the metamodel, a Dependency is a directed relationship from a client (or clients) to a supplier (or suppliers), stating that the client is dependent on the supplier (in other words, the client element requires the presence and knowledge of the supplier element). In the metamodel, an Abstraction is a Dependency in which there is mapping between the supplier and the client. Depending on the specific stereotype of Abstraction, mapping may be formal or informal, and may be unidirectional or bidirectional. If an Abstraction element has more than one client element, the supplier element maps into the set of client elements as a group. For example, an analysis-level class might be split into several design-level classes. The situation is similar if there is more than one supplier element. Dependencies are widely used inside Objecteering/UML to manage traceability. Any model element can be traced to another model element using this association.Objecteering:Under Objecteering, a dependency can only have one client and one supplier. Under Objecteering 5.3, a dependency belonged to the “supplier" Model element which was contradictory with UML2. Under Objecteering 6, in order to comply with UML2 the roles are swaped and renamed. The correspondance from UML2 is now as follow: Dependency.client = Dependency.Impacted; Dependency.supplier = Dependency.DependsOn; Element.supplierDependency = ModelElement.ImpactedDependency; Element.clientDependency = ModelElement.DependsOnDependency. A dependency now belongs to the Impacted element (the client under UML2).
A Dependency states that the implementation or functioning of one or more elements requires the presence of one or more other elements.
The composition was on the ModelElement.SupplierDependency role
instead of ModelElement.ClientDependency accoreding to UML.
The dependencies were read from the supplier (invariant) to the client (dependant). They must be read in the opposite way according to UML.
The roles are renamed :
Stéréotype : "UML"
Classes parentes :
Diagrammes de classes : Associations :