[Uml-devel] Recent Association patch.

[Oliver Kellogg]

Brian Thomas wrote:
> > [...] The problem here is we would need paste
> > buffers for _two_ objects.
>
> But we should just be caching the meta-data about the association
> (generally, thats just the fields of the UMLAssociation) instead of 
> passing around object pointers. 

I'm not sure I understand. By "paste buffers" I already meant
XMI clips not object pointers.

> 1. AssociationWidgets may share UMLAssociations (used to be simple
> one-to-one, now its many-to-one).

Where's the problem?
AFAIK this is what the Document-View model is all about.
The Doc objects are the "real" objects and each Doc object
only exists once. The View objects are mere renderings of the
Doc objects. Any number of View objects (i.e. widgets) may
exist for a given Doc object at any time.

> 2. New types of associations, e.g. at_Realization, (a type of dependancy)

Granted, I haven't used that one yet.

> Neither of these changes have been fully debugged. As a result of the
> first change, its possible to have unattached UMLAssociations floating 
> around, because the parent AssociationWidgets no longer can control 
> if they live or die.

Mega-Whoa! What do you mean by "parent" AssociationWidgets ???
A Doc object is NEVER the child of a View object.
Actually I don't think the parent-child relation applies here,
but if at all, then View objects could be seen as the
children of the corresponding Doc object insofar as children
may come and go, but parents stay.

> Strictly speaking the UMLAssociation class should be
>  in *composition* with
>  the parent AssociationWidget, IF it is created with a
>  parent AssocWidget. 
> [...]

I totally disagree - see above.

> > What do you mean? I use cut&paste of associations all the time!
>
> Ugh. How do you do that? I dont see the cut'n paste buttons working

In the diagram, do a multiple selection of the two role objects
and the association. You can then cut'n'paste those three.

--Oliver