Use case patterns
A use case represents a unit of the functionality specification of a system. Industrial object-oriented projects have applied use cases to capture user requirements. Use cases can be used throughout the whole process of object-oriented software development [14]. But, the problem of how to write use cases is still puzzling even software experts [6]. it reflects the lack of a systematic approach to capturing use cases. The set of use cases in a use case model is unstructured regarding the structure of the problem addressed by an application. This paper presents a notion of a use case pattern and proposes using a use case pattern to guide use case capturing. A use case pattern encodes reusable knowledge on the structure and function of a specific class of applications. It guides the work of use case gathering. We illustrate the approach to use case modeling with several use case patterns.
use case use case model requirements capture transaction data flow diagram executive hierarchy