[Year 12 SofDev] Use Cases, context diagrams

[Mark KELLY]

Thanks, Kevork.

The second link raises an interesting point when it says "For reasons that
remain a mystery to me, many people focus on the stick figures and ellipses
in use case writing since Jacobson's first book, *Object-Oriented Software
Engineering* (1993) came out, and have neglected to notice that use cases
are fundamentally a text form."

I must admit I've mainly stressed use case DIAGRAMS (UCD) with kids and
spent little time on the textual descriptions of the use cases in the SRS.
For the simple use cases we handle, I've found the UCD alone conveys all
the necessary info, and giving textual use cases as well is mere
duplication of the UCD. In the SRS, I tend to gloss over the textual use
cases section.  My outcomes last year took this approach and VCAA said
nothing about that being a problem when they were audited.

The study design does not give much of a clue about the relative balance of
use case text/diagrams, apart from requiring students to know use cases (SD
U3O1 KK10) and the composition of an SRS (SD U3O1 KK12).

The detailed example for U3O1 mentions drawing a UCD. The assessment
handbook's rubric for U3O1 says that "all relationships between users, the
network, including data flows, and the proposed solution are accurately and
clearly represented *diagramatically*" (which to me suggests a CD/DFD and a
UCD).

Do you guys stress the textual descriptions of use cases in the SRS, or
mainly rely on the UCD?

Just curious.

Cheers
Mark


On 8 February 2012 11:16, Kevork Krozian <kevork at edulists.com.au> wrote:

>
> Hi Folks,
>
> A couple of really good links covering use cases and context diagrams.
> http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/use-case
>
>
> http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/news/1280295/From-use-case-diagrams-to-context-diagrams?asrc=EM_NLN_2495725&track=NL-498&ad=607290&
>
>
>
> Kind Regards
>
> Kevork Krozian
> Edulists Creator Administrator
> www.edulists.com.au<http://www.edulists.com.au>
> tel: 0419 356 034
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-- 
Mark Kelly
Manager of ICT, Reporting, IT Learning Area
McKinnon Secondary College
McKinnon Rd McKinnon 3204, Victoria, Australia
Direct line / Voicemail: +613 8520 9085, Fax +613 9578 9253
kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au
VCE IT Lecture Notes: http://vceit.com
Moderator: IT Applications Edulist <http://www.edulists.com.au/>

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