I recommend that you stick to using the UML Sequence Diagram a little more literally - it's not a 'website design diagram', unless THAT is what you WANT to make it. I don't recommend that you violate the UML Sequence Diagram construct by including webpages in the diagram, as this violates the rigor of the UML Sequence Diagram constructs, and it defeats some of its purpose (to remove visual - and other - considerations from what should be rather pure business logic and/or the interactions of your design). Suggestions/frameworks/best practices exist solely to advise and constrain your behavior in favor of a particular outcome, and are based upon the combined experience of many, many very talented people. But rigor constraining behavior for a specific goal is usually 'A Good Thing(tm)', because it saves you from yourself - or from 'misuing' (of sorts) the framework that you've selected. Rigor, for its own sake, is not good or even necessary. you've chosen, and it will only lead to less rigor. But these are (and should be) 'red flags' that alert you to the fact that you are going outside of the original concept/reason for using whatever technique/tool/etc. I find that you can almost always make a case to violate any guiding principle, design approach, teaming agreement, programming language paradigm, and even engineering 'best practice'. (It's not a 'website design diagram', it's a sequence-of-logic diagram.) If you are strictly designing sequence logic, you should have NO preconceived notions as to how the visual implementation might look. Webpages would serve no purpose that is not alredy addressed within the current UML Sequence Diagram language and definition.Īdditionally, by including a web page into any design document, you are presupposing a visual implementation. Web pages are part of the visual presentation of your final implementation, and are not part of any UML Sequence Diagram language construct. So far I haven't found an authoritative source that I can quote on the subject, instead of personal opinions. arguing in favor or in opposition to including presentation artifacts in UML design diagrams. It'd be ideal if the answers quoted design/modeling guidelines, books on UML, etc.

What's the recommendation/best practice on this? Should we include an artifact representing a web page in each of our sequence diagrams, or not? Also, in my experience I had not seen web pages included in sequence diagrams, up until now. If I were to include a web page it'd be in a navigation diagram. I think it's a bad idea to include a web page, for me a sequence diagram should be about business logic and the interactions between business objects, and not include presentation concerns such as web pages. In my current project, we have an ongoing discussion about whether or not it's a good idea to include an artifact representing a web page in an UML sequence diagram for a web application, making explicit which page starts a business interaction.

Sequence diagram for website example