action - What is the semantics of UML's ReadVariableAction in BoUML?

Question

ReadVariableAction activity action in BoUML allows to choose a class and its attribute and returns the attribute through creation of output pin (see figure below and BoUML documentation):

But what is the semantic of that action? What does ReadVariableAction operation actually return?

According to clause 16.9.3.1 Variable Action of The Unified Modeling Language Specification Version 2.5:

A VariableAction operates on a statically-specified Variable. The Variable must be one that is defined either by an Activity (see sub clause 15.2) or a StructuredActivityNode (see sub clause 16.11) containing the VariableAction.

Clause 15.2.2 Abstract Syntax below says that Variable subsets ownedMember, so the variable should be identifiable by name.

But BoUML neither allows creation of variables for an activity nor passing a name of a variable to ReadVariableAction.

It seems that I could use ReadVariableAction as shown below

But it's wrong model from UML's point of view.

Answer 1

The semantic of the read/write/clear/add/remove variable actions in BoUML is ... wrong !

Clearly I misunderstood that part when I added the activities in BoUML, I didn't read well the norm to understood that concerns variable of the activity or a structured activity node. So by error the 'variable' I allow to choose is an attribute of a class. An other consequence is you cannot define variables for an activity nor structured activity node.

Mea culpa

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BoUML 7.10 is available and fix the problem