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Author Topic: Advanced UC scenarios / extensions  (Read 6200 times)

chessjohn

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Advanced UC scenarios / extensions
« on: December 28, 2006, 07:59:40 am »
I use EA, but find the UC support not optimal.
I tried Serlio's Case Complete Application.
In this app I found a few nice features EA is missing:
Creation of Extension Points in the scenario.
Automatic Link to Actors and UC's (so the appear underlined and are consistent!

etc.

Are there any ideas or existing add-inns that provide better support for this kind of typical UC actions?

«Midnight»

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Re: Advanced UC scenarios / extensions
« Reply #1 on: December 28, 2006, 08:27:02 am »
John,

The news isn't good, but at least it is not a total loss.

You should be able to add extension points now. Right-click the use case in question, and from the context menu choose Advanced | Edit Extension Points.

However, if you mean that EA should detect these and add something to the notation or graphic automatically, then EA is lacking here; you have to do this manually. Note that many some authors are depreciating display of extension points in favor of using «extend» links. Still, your point stands, and this could be useful in some approaches to transformation scripts and automation support.

As to the whole business of highlighting references to actors or other use cases (or anything else for that matter), this would require formatted Notes text. This is a long-standing feature request. Lately, this seems to be getting some traction, and Sparx may have it on their wish list. As of build 801 (802 is current at this time) we've been able to display a Notes compartment on some elements, so formatting could well be on the way.

Once we have the ability to format the Notes field, highlighting becomes possible.

Here's two suggestions you might want to follow, which could help move this along. Please take a moment to look through the Suggestions and Requests section of the forum for the most recent thread requesting rich text (or whatever) formatting in Notes. Take a moment to post a message adding your support. This helps Sparx gauge the level of interest in a given requests, so they can prioritize development.

Once there's movement - or perhaps right away - you could start a thread requesting automated highlighting of names of elements linked to the use case. Perhaps you might even suggest (I shamelessly hint) that we could add a link via some kind of dialog and have EA insert (and highlight) the name automatically. That way perhaps EA could update the Notes field if the name changed. Wow!

HTH, David
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chessjohn

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Re: Advanced UC scenarios / extensions
« Reply #2 on: December 29, 2006, 12:33:40 am »
Thanx for the extensive reply.
I'll try your suggestions in EA asap!

BTW: I shall not switch from EA tot CaseComplete, just for missing these nice features. I think EA is a great tool!


bioform

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Re: Advanced UC scenarios / extensions
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2007, 06:06:07 pm »
I tend to extend EA's functionality using MS Access in lieu of writing triggers, coding an add-in (am prototyping my future Add-Ins using MS Access and VBA for now.)

I currently derive a dialog script from a use cases activity diagram which I then propogate to the UC's scenario notes field, and matching test note fields...

So if you like to do that sort of thing, you can really create some powerful workarounds with not too much effort...

[Really, I will get around to coding some of these as Add-Ins, just don't have the time right now!]
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«Midnight»

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Re: Advanced UC scenarios / extensions
« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2007, 05:54:17 am »
Bioform's idea is quite sound. From time to time I need to create a 'throw-away' add-in for something I'll likely only use once. I find that VBA, hosted by one of the MS Office applications, works quite well with EA. It tends to be light weight, and you don't have the overhead of a development environment or installation kit to deal with.
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