Use case doubt

[olah]

Hello,

As I understand, it is good practice to think of use cases by levels, adding detail on each level, but never loosing system functionality. How should I do this is EA? Should I create many use case diagrams for each level of detail? Should I add detail for each use case (using composite model, for example) ?

Thanks so much,
Olah

[«Midnight»]

You need enough detail to explain what the expected behavior of the system is at the level in question. Remember that the job of the use case is to explain what happens when the system is used, not to explain how the system does its work. Explaining internal details is what other diagram types are for. [Although some of these may also be helpful as elaborations of a use case, perhaps to support scenarios that would be clumsy to write, or to help readers to quickly grasp what is going on.]

Just my 0.02 CAD on the issue. Chime on folks!

David

[Oliver F.]

Just my 0.02 CAD on the issue. Chime on folks!

So I take this ball.
In fact we use UseCases to describe behavior of all sorts.
Sometimes diagrams do not show the whole story or a hard to understand so they need some more informational details.
So there are business use cases and system use cases which describe requirements of behavior on the system level (eg. the functionality/interaction of heartbeat messages, etc.) in a complex environment.
We distinguish between those by using different stereotypes (from our UML profile, of course) for business and system cases.

Oliver