Push/pull visualization in dataflow diagram

Question

I'm trying to visualize a data flow in a diagram where data can flow in one or many directions. Some actors push the data to another actor in the diagram and other actors pull the data.

From what I can find, there is no notation of it in uml but I might be wrong. What would be a good way of conveying who the acting part is as well as the direction(s) of the data flow in a diagram like this?

Answer 1

I might be influenced by the german software company I currently work at, but for those cases I really like FMC (Fundamental Modeling Concepts), which is -- said oversimplified -- a more abstract version of modeling (than e.g. UML) and is mainly used by software architects.

The point why I recommend that here, is that FMC already has the a concept of agents and thus can be easily used for actor diagrams. It has connectors for something called channels, which can be unidirectional and thus are good to visualize message passing and simple connectors for data access (read, read/write, and write; e.g. database access). I used it for some modelings of a actor-based Akka systems and it worked quite well for me.

If it's not FMC, I'd also use data flow diagrams as will recommended.

Answer 2

will confirms that there are no immediate solutions for this in UML so the options I see are: separating the flows, coloring the graph in some custom way, use different arrow types or fiddle with the graph in some other way to convey the message.