Rusty
There are guidelines for writing a good use case which you can find in
Alistair Cockburn's book "Writing Effective Use Cases". Use cases are not
precise, however, so they cannot be inherently well-formed. If you've been
following the discussions about use cases and formal specifications on this
list then you'll note that some of us advocate having a precise
specification of system behaviour written in a language like OCL as well as
an informal description for customers.
If you're new to UML then I thoroughly recommend Cockburn's book as an
initial guideline.
Needless to say, use cases are a point of major debate - so you'll probably
get lots of different answers! You might also want to investigate how system
testers use them to find test scenarios, as this will be helpful in
validating use cases.
Good luck
Jason Gorman
http://www.xml-objects.com
PS. Yes, "Design By Contract VI" is on the site, for those of you who have
finished the first five. VII is all about testing, and VIII is all about use
cases (funnily enough) and both are nearly finished, so look out for those.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Williamson, Rusty
Sent: 28 February 2001 14:58
To: 'Rose Forum'
Subject: (ROSE) Rules for well formed use cases...
Hello,
I am trying to come up with some rules for creating good, well formed use
cases. I'm referring to concrete use cases - ones directly connected to
actors. Our people are new to UML and use cases and keep coming up with use
cases like "Enter Line Item" (not a complete function), "Make Change" (not a
'system' function) and "Calculate Tax" (among other things, internal - an
analysis issue). We are trying to adhere to the OMG 1.3 UML Specification
and are using RUP.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on this? Has anyone seen a list
of 'rules' posted anywhere?
Thanks in advance for any help!
Rusty Williamson
---------------------------------------------------------------
Rusty Williamson
Sr. Systems Architect
Corporate Office
GERS, Inc.
10431 Wateridge Circle * San Diego, CA 92121
(800) 854-2263 * CA (858) 457-3888
FAX (858) 484-9237 * Desk (858) 484-9237
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Web http://www.gers.com
"e-Business Solutions for the Consumer-Driven World"
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