Sparx Systems Forum

Enterprise Architect => Uml Process => Topic started by: crd on September 17, 2012, 11:31:47 pm

Title: Use Case - Primary / Secondary Actors
Post by: crd on September 17, 2012, 11:31:47 pm

How have others distinguished between Primary and Secondary Actors for a Use Case?

Thanks in advance,
Carol

Title: Re: Use Case - Primary / Secondary Actors
Post by: Geert Bellekens on September 17, 2012, 11:56:23 pm

Carol,

They are often distinguished by their location on the diagram relative to the use case.
I think usually left = primary, right is secondary.

We do no make that distinction at my current client.

Geert

Title: Re: Use Case - Primary / Secondary Actors
Post by: crd on September 17, 2012, 11:57:28 pm

I need to be able to distinguish for reporting purposes for my client.

Title: Re: Use Case - Primary / Secondary Actors
Post by: crd on September 18, 2012, 12:06:58 am

Sorry - hit Enter too soon.  What I think my options are:
1.  Tagged Values of UC - Primary Actors / Secondary Actors

• Drawback - could be out of sync with other relationships between actor and UC
• Pro - stored right with UC

2.  Tagged value on relationship between Actor and UC - never used this not sure whether good idea or not.

Any other thoughts?

Title: Re: Use Case - Primary / Secondary Actors
Post by: jfzouain on September 18, 2012, 01:04:35 am

Hi

I will tell you how I have managed this complex situation.
Actor - in General Tab just say this Actor can be a User, Super User, Help User and so on. Or create different actors per user.

Use cases - in each Use Case create a Constraint per actor what can he can do or not do in this Use Case. This way you can have a Precondition per  User.
Hope this help.

Title: Re: Use Case - Primary / Secondary Actors
Post by: qwerty on September 18, 2012, 06:28:54 pm

I usually distinguish them via the relation. A primary is connected via a (directed) association while the secondary is connected via a use relation.

q.

Title: Re: Use Case - Primary / Secondary Actors
Post by: crd on September 18, 2012, 08:15:28 pm

Thank you for your responses.  I ended up doing something close to q's suggestion.  I stereotyped the Association lines as "primary" and "secondary"

Does this solution break any UML Use Case rules?

Now to figure out how to manage the RTF generator to be able to report on them separately.  

Carol

Title: Re: Use Case - Primary / Secondary Actors
Post by: qwerty on September 18, 2012, 08:54:21 pm

In certain situations I also used <<primary>> and <<secondary>> as stereotypes for associations. This is not breaking any UML UC rules. So go ahead.

Can't help with RTF, though.

q.

Title: Re: Use Case - Primary / Secondary Actors
Post by: Matt Taylor on September 27, 2012, 01:35:41 am

Generally if a directed Association has the arrow head at the use case it is a Primary and if the arrow head is at the actor it is a secondary.  We use eaDocx to report on this and it works well.

Title: Re: Use Case - Primary / Secondary Actors
Post by: crd on September 27, 2012, 01:38:41 am

Thanks!

Is there a "switch" to turn the << >> notation off around a  <<stereotype>> ?

Title: Re: Use Case - Primary / Secondary Actors
Post by: KP on September 27, 2012, 09:27:57 am

Quote

Thanks!

Is there a "switch" to turn the << >> notation off around a  <<stereotype>> ?

There is no switch, but for a connector, you can give the stereotype the following shape script:

Code: [Select]

label middlebottomlabel
{
      print("#stereotype#");
}