UML22 — 1. Deployment

1. Deployment
> What is client and what is supplier for this relationship?
> Why DeploymentTARGET has word "target" in name but subsets "source"
> for Dependency?

The meaning of "client" and "supplier" in Dependency is pretty arbitrary and depends on one's point of view. I don't recall the reasoning behind this particular choice, but it may have to do with the direction of the arrow more than anything else. Guus probably wanted the arrow to go from the artifact to the node because it looked more natural to him. Perhaps Guus can explain – I've copied him on this reply.

However, there is definitely a bug here since "client" and "supplier" are not derived unions, hence, they cannot be subset as shown in figure 126. This may have already been raised as an issue. I'll have to check. I suggest that you raise a formal issue in any case.

> And why notation examples are from Artifact to Node (arrow near
> Node, but Node is "client" in model).

Ostensibly, this is explained by what I wrote above. However, there seems to be a deeper problem here: note that Dependency::supplier and Dependency::client are not specializations of DirectedRelationship::target and DirectedRelationship::source respectively, as I would have expected (otherwise it does not seem to make sense to subclass DirectedRelationship at all). I do not understand why this is so, it does not seem to make sense. It may have to do with the constraints that Dependency did not want to impose on supplier and client, but I am not sure. This needs further study and, likely, an issue to be raised.

> "Location" attribute of Deployment should be DeploymentTarget, not Node.

You are correct. Please raise an official issue on this through issues@omg.org

Questions about the appropriateness of the use of Dependency and the directionality of theway its ends are connected
are covered by other issues, such as 10781. In any case, such changes require modifications to the metamodel and are
thereby out of scope for the UML 2.5 FTF.
There no requirement that client and supplier must be, or must subset, derived unions. In Clause 19.5, the location
attribute of Deployment is clearly identified as type DeploymentTarget.
Disposition: Merged with 10781