Publication detail

A Graph Representation for Use Case Specifications

BUREŠ, F., RYŠAVÝ, O.

Original Title

A Graph Representation for Use Case Specifications

Type

conference paper

Language

English

Original Abstract

Use cases represent widespread industrial approach to formulation and refinement of requirements specification on a system. Although in the last decade several formal representations of use cases were defined there is still gap between their practical use and those theories. This paper provides a formulation of semantics for use cases that is based on the theory of hierarchical graphs arguing that the definition despite its simplicity is powerful enough to represent all common aspects related with use case concepts. Use case specification is divided into three levels. At the bottom level each use case is considered as a flat graph of events. The middle level shapes use cases into episodes enabling to identify and reuse common fragments. The top level depicts interaction between actors and the modeled system through use case entities. Involving hierarchical graphs enables specifying all three levels in the consistent way and provides necessary abstraction on higher levels while all details is maintained in the bottom level.

Keywords

formal methods, hierarchical graphs, object-oriented methodology, requirement specification, software engineering, use cases

Authors

BUREŠ, F., RYŠAVÝ, O.

RIV year

2004

Released

27. 2. 2004

Publisher

World Scientific and Engineering Academy

Location

Salzburg

ISBN

960-8052-95-5

Book

Proceedings of the WSEAS International Conferences

Pages from

686

Pages to

690

Pages count

5

URL

http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/~rysavy/publikace/2004/formalusecases.pdf

BibTex

@inproceedings{BUT16904,
  author="František {Bureš} and Ondřej {Ryšavý}",
  title="A Graph Representation for Use Case Specifications",
  booktitle="Proceedings of the WSEAS International Conferences",
  year="2004",
  pages="5",
  publisher="World Scientific and Engineering Academy",
  address="Salzburg",
  isbn="960-8052-95-5",
  url="http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/~rysavy/publikace/2004/formalusecases.pdf"
}