UML22 — Section: Activities, ExpansionRegion (05)

<pre> In ExpansionRegion, clarify the interaction of elements from multiple input collections (ie, there is none). Clarify that the region operates on each collection in the specified mode. From Jim R: If there are N input collections (note there may also be plain scalar inputs, whose value remains constant in each of the executions), then one value from the same position in each of them represents a "slice". The slice is not actually formed into an object or a single value. The body of the region is executed once for each slice. Each of its pins gets the value from the given position in the corresponding input collection. Each execution is independent and concurrent, therefore the values from different positions do not interact. If the body interacts with an outside object, then there is a high possibility of conflict among the concurrent executions, so that is not usually recommened, although it is not forbidden by the UML2 rules. If it does happen, you can't assume any particular order of execution or even that two executions won't hit the same slot at the same time (in this, it is the same as all other uses of concurrency in UML). If each execution keeps to its own subset of values (for example, by indexing into a collection using the input position for that execution), then things might be OK; otherwise it's probably a real bad idea to use this construct. It works best when the computations are purely internal, in that case the concurrency poses no problems at all and permits total freedom in implementation; those kinds of computations are pretty common in practice. </pre>

see above