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umlmodelingmdriven

"EffectiveName" and "OtherEnd" structure in MDriven

Backround to the problem: I have connected two classes to each other in UML, both of them being regular classes and one of them is named "League".

In the "miscellaneous" menu in MDriven, I found that the following “EffectiveName": "League_children” as well as "OtherEnd": "League_parent".

This was confusing in three ways:

  1. There is not a class named "League" in "OtherEnd"
  2. The terms "League_children” and "League_parent" were created automatically
  3. It says "League_children" not "LeagueChildren" with the latter one I thought was more correct becuase of how you write in code, and also everywere else in the diagrams and menus in MDriven's workspace.

I read about the terms "children" and "parent" in the official book (https://www.capableobjects.com/xdownloads/MDrivenTheBook/MDrivenTheBook-Part2-Design.pdf ) and obviously these are used when you have superclasses and subclasses to those. However, neither "League" or any other class in my diagrams as of now are superclasses", so why are these names created then?

Furthermore, "OtherEnd" is not called "League" and therefore shouldn't have be called "League_parent".

I searched through my different classes and found no hidden associations that I had acidentally/falsely deleted.

Solution

  • I recognize the _Parent _Children pattern as what MDriven does when adding an association from a class back to the same class.

    If you check the Class in the tree I bet you will find an association pointing back to self. If this was added by mistake - delete it.

    Normally MDriven leaves the name of association ends blank - then the effective name will be the name of the Class in the end. Name - if set - overrides this.

    When creating associations back to self - MDriven sets the names of the ends appending _Parent and _Children.