Affiliations: Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and
PhysicsDepartment of Software Engineering, Malostranske namesti 25, 118 00
Prague 1, Czech Republic
Abstract: Although widely used, traditional use case modeling does not provide
explicit means which could be easily used for capturing and testing behavior
compliance of the entities involved in a particular use case model.
Specifically, a use case model (a set of use cases) related to a system under
design provides neither an explicit abstraction to capture the "whole
picture" of the behavior of the system, nor to cover the interactions of
subsystems and internal actors with the parent system. With the aim to allow
for reasoning on the behavior, the paper introduces a simple formal model
Generic UC View which identifies important abstractions and the relations upon
them which target the goal. Among them, the concept of use case expression is
the base for the desired reasoning on whether the behavior of an entity (such
as an agent, a subsystem or a software component) complies with the composed
behavior of its sub-entities, and the behavior on the communication links of
two neighboring entities is compliant. As a proof of the concept, an instance
of use case expressions, pro-cases is introduced. Based on behavior protocols,
pro-cases can be checked for compliance via an already existing verifier. As
pro-cases' syntax is simple, resembling regular-expressions, there are simple
guidelines for transforming a use case written in classical textual form (based
on a template) into a pro-case.
Keywords: use case model, generic UC view, pro-case, behavior protocols
