Associating a system use case to a requirement

[Emilio]

Say I have a bunch of requirements defined in a Requirements Diagram within my model. Then I have a bunch of interrelated system use cases in a Use Case diagram. Both my Use Cases and Requirements have a unique ID to identify it (don't confuse it with the GUID used internally by EA) and this requirement/use case ID I place in the "Alias" field of the properties.

A Use Case properties dialog has if I remember correctly a Requires or Requirements tab.

Now, typically the use case diagrams are already full of the use case balloons/ovals. In the EA examples I see that one can map a use case as "realizing" a requirement by dropping the requirement object in the dagram and linking them with a "Realizes" connector.

That is fine but in the end the UC diagrams are already full of ovals to clutter them further with the requirements. It is nice for visualization but my actual question is:

Given that the requirement exists and the Use Case exists, if one drops a "realize" connector between the use case and the requirement, does the requirement gets automatically added to the use case's  Requires/Requirements properties?

If that is so, then the visualization has yet another advantage and reduces the maintenance of the model by having to do it by hand.

[«Midnight»]

I don't think it does get added, but I could be wrong (I didn't check).

Check out the various other views EA offers. Perhaps the matrix or hierarchy views will help with your visualization.

[Eve]

Requirements realized by an element are shown in the requirements list on the properties, but are unreadable.

One thing that may help with both showing these requirement relationships as well as creating them would be the relationship matrix.  That way you don't have to clutter up your use case diagram.

[Dermot]

Hello Emilio,

A trick: When in a Use case diagram you can simply drag a requirement Element onto a Use Case Element in the diagram and it will automacticaly set up a Realization to the Use Case.  For more information on using the relationship matrix etc. I would suggest you have a look over the whitepaper on Requirements in:
http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/resources/whitepapers/index.html

[RoyC]

Actually, if you drop a Requirement onto a Use Case, it does create an 'invisible' realization relationship and it does get added to the Require tab. Although the Requirement name won't move up into the Requirement field, if you double-click on it the Properties dialog displays for that Requirement.

Another thing you can do is depict the relationships between certain requirements, certain UseCases, certain Classes and on down the chain as you prefer, on a Traceability diagram. You create a Custom diagram, call it Traceability xxxx and drag on the required elements. Create realization relationships between the elements. This depicts or traces the implementation from requirement through to test or deployment if you wish, for only the chain you want rather than all requirements spinning through all Use Cases to all Classes and so-on. The Hierarchy Window is invaluable for showing where else the chain impacts or is impacted.

At the moment, you won't find much about this on the web or in the Help, but I'm writing some pages right now.

[Emilio]

Thank you for these fantastic answers. I have in the meantime downloaded and printed several of the whitepapers. In particular I am involved with requirements, use cases, technical model (class and component diagrams) as well as data modeling. All of these are covered in the whitepapers.

Later on I hope to tackle the RTF document to cut down on my current cut and paste