Issue when Return Message is a collection of objects (Sequence Diagram)

Question

I have a sequence diagram for the following operation. The Activity class uses method present in ActivityBL class. The method is: GetActivities(ActivitySearch objt)

The result message is a collection of Activity objects. (Colletion in C#). How do we represent the return message in the sequence diagram? At present, I am listing it as message containing only one Activity object. How to represent it as a collection?

Answer 1

You don't need to include the return value at all, unless it adds clarification about the turn of events in the diagram.

Since the message says "GetActivities" the return value and the fact that there is a return value is kinda obvious isn't it?

If you do include it I would keep it conceptual: "activities" or "activity list". For being more specific about types and data structures, if you must, I'd stick to putting it in a class diagram.