Amazon.co.uk
A use case is an interaction between your system and an actor--a person or entity using it. So it describes how your system "looks" to the outside world. In
Applying Use Cases the authors show you how use cases describe what your system should do and how each thing it does should relate to other parts of the system.
Use cases are an integral part of UML and RUP so enterprise-level programmers need to know them. They are most useful in the planning stages of large projects to provide a sanity check and a framework. The authors demonstrate the use case process with a hypothetical project to develop a new mail order company. Somewhat twee "discussions" between the fictional developers humanise the subject and provide an unusual degree of narrative tension for such an academic work.
About two thirds of the book is concerned with teaching you how use case is employed. It covers documentation, diagramming, levels of detail and the review process. There's also discussion on splitting large projects and construction/delivery of the system. In the appendices you'll find resources--books and Web sites--documentation templates, UML notation and the order processing system itself taken as far as designing graphic interfaces.
All in all, a thoroughly readable, hands on, introduction to an important and useful project design tool. --Steve Patient
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Amazon.com
With the emergence of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) over the last few years, developers new to the advantages of thorough software-engineering practices now have a better notational system for designing more effective software. To use UML effectively, you will want to create
use cases, which help describe the requirements of a system. In their concise and very readable book, the authors of
Applying Use Cases show how use cases can benefit all aspects of the software-design process and let you create better software in less time.
This guide provides a case study for a mail-order business (with some e-commerce as well) as its central example. Use cases define how actors (i.e., users) are defined for all the various components of a mail-order business, including inventory, accounting, and order fulfillment. The authors suggest that while use cases are particularly useful at the beginning of a project cycle--for assessing risks and setting project timetables, for instance--they are also useful for testing and deployment of systems (specifically, for creating documentation and help manuals). The sample use cases--and supporting design documents--are what's best in this text. --Richard Dragan