C2MS11 — Make Fields Table and UML Match the Order of Fields for greater Readabliity

It would greatly aid readability of the specification if the tables listing the message contents by field separated the required fields from the optional fields. By doing this, the UML and descriptive tables would be in alignment.

This is true throughout, but for one pretty clear example, see section 8.6.1.3. The UML (figure 8-13) (page 101) and the table (table 8-69) are hard to read together when looking at both.

In this case, there are two blocks in the UML diagram that contain fields: one block is "Required Fields" and the other "Optional Fields". The table, simply shows fields. When reading down the fields in the table, the listed fields come from the two different UML blocks in the following order:

1-Required
2-Optional
3-Required
4-Optional
5-Optional
6-Required
7-Required
8-Optional
9-Optional
10-Required

It would be much more clear to have all the fields in the table be listed in the same order as the UML diagram, with Required first, followed by Optional, along with a column specifying required or optional. Alternatively, there could be two tables: one for required fields in the same order as the "Required Fields" block of UML, and a second table with all the optional fields in the same order as the "Optional Fields" block of UML.

As mentioned above, this is one example, but this disconnect between the UML and the Fields table is true throughout the document.