You use data objects to model how documents, data, and other objects are used and updated during the process flow. Data Objects are artifacts that may represent many different types of objects, both electronic and physical. They do not have any direct affect on the Sequence Flow or Message Flow of the process flow, but they do provide information about what the process flow does.
A Data Object is represented by a portrait-oriented rectangle that has its upper-right corner folded over, as shown below.
Corresponding data
You may specify the data that the Data Object symbol represents in the Corresponding Data property of its definition dialog. A Data Object may represent a Class of objects (UML terminology) or an Entity (a relational data modeling terminology that means a logical table).
Within the definition dialog for a Data Object, you may click on the Choices button in the Corresponding Data field to bring up a Select and Drag dialog that will list all classes and entities already in the repository. You may select one or more classes and/or entities and drag them into the dialog.
State
You may specify the state that a Data Object is in on a Business Process diagram. By doing so, you may show how the state of a data object changes during the course of a process flow. For example, a Reservation data object may go from the state of Provisionally Reserved to Reserved to Cancelled during the course of a flow.
To specify the state of a data object
1 Open the definition dialog of a Data Object symbol on an open diagram (double click on the symbol, or right-click and choose Edit, Data Object).
2 On the Symbol tab, type in the state of the particular data object in the State text box property.
3 Click OK. The state will be displayed on the Data Object symbol, underneath its name, in brackets.
Note Properties on the Symbol tab apply only to that instance of the symbol. Properties in the other tabs apply to the definition of the symbol, and are global throughout the repository. So you may have the same Data Object definition represented by three separate symbols on the same diagram. Each represents the same definition (and therefore has the same values for all properties in the other tabs), but could have different values for the properties in the Symbol tab.
