Runtime semantics of use case stories

Abstract

Direct end-user participation in software system construction necessitates bringing general-purpose programming activities to the level understandable by "laymen". This paper introduces a new software development approach where stories written in commonly understood structured natural language gain runtime semantics. Stories are precisely linked to domain concepts and actions, thus forming the application logic of the system. These constructs are written at a high level of abstraction, very close to detailed software requirements specifications. In fact, they are structured into familiar use case models that include special "invocation" relationships between use cases. At the same time, the paper proposes precise translational semantics for such defined stories. For each story element, equivalent Java code is derived. This semantics has been implemented within a tool containing a story editor and a code generator producing fully dynamic application logic code with Swing-based user interface. Ease of use of the new story language and usefulness of the generated Java code has been evaluated through student assignment projects.

In praise of use cases – a paean with a software accompaniment

“…For example, Firesmith (2004) already identifies simple abstract stories along with detailed, case-specific scenarios as the raw materials from which use case paths or 'flows', user-system use case path interactions, and ultimately trigger-and precondition-rich textual requirements are derived. Elsewhere the approach to melding stories and use cases demonstrates an almost instinctive simplicity: Śmiałek, Jarzębowski and Nowakowski (2012) formulate stories in the form subject-verb-(direct)object or subject-verb-object-(indirect)object, and use these directly as individual steps that collectively make up a flowwhether normal or conditionalin a particular use case. Wautelet, Heng, Hintea, Kolp and Poelmans (2016) are more forthright in their ambition to 'bridge user story sets with the use case model', identifying 'goals' and 'tasks' in user stories and mapping these to use cases that are linked as appropriate with <<extend>> and <<include>> relationships (the authors provide a detailed rationale to justify the mapping process and the use of the standard relationships).…”

Generating Database Access Code From Domain Models

“…The upper layers (View and Presenter) of a complete software system can be fully generated from RSL models as shown byŚmiałek et al [10], [11], [26]. This approach does not generate any contents of the Model layer.…”