UC-Sketch goes online

What is UC-Sketch?

UC-Sketch is a platform for rapid development of project documentation in form of use cases. System supports process of writing use cases in automatic way. UC-Sketch contains patterns of use cases, transactions, extensions, and actions. All of patterns are universal and can be adjusted to any purpose. System has a built-in advanced use-case editor allowing for manipulating use case like never before. After sketching use cases, system generates them to textual form - HTML and LaTeX.

The tool is available at: https://ucsketch.cs.put.poznan.pl

Who is it for?

UC-Sketch is for everyone who are dealing with writing use cases. It simplifies process of writing use cases, reduce time of writing them, and now this is not such a repeatable task!

Why use it?

Describing requirements of complex systems requires dozens of use cases to be identified and precisely described. Writing all of them from scratch is time-consuming, and in many cases it is a repeatable task. However, such similarities between use cases and the knowledge about their structure can potentially benefit in building a pattern-based system that could support analysts in quickly “sketching” use-case descriptions. That's why UC-Sketch was developed.

How to use it?

First, create an account. In next step, create your first specification and there add new use cases. When you edit one of them, it will be displayed our special use-case editor. System on his own suggest you what is the most probable main transaction of this use cases. Then, you can:

• Choose pattern of use case (dependent on main transaction), what fills your editor with steps and parameters,
• Edit any step as you want,
• Add new step or choose template of action,
• Add new transaction (just choose it from list),
• Pin new extension to any action,
• Choose values of parameters, add new ones, and delete not needed,
• If there is anything you don't like in use case, remove it,
• See how your use case will look like after parameter replacement.

At the end, after sketching one or all use cases, system can generate your use cases as HTML page and LaTeX format. Try it!

How it works?

Our idea of sketching a use case is presented on the diagram on the right side. It shows the main idea of creating specification with this solution. First (1), an analyst prepares a Use Case Diagram (or identifies the names of use cases in other way), which contains all titles of use cases. Then (2), with the use of a tool implementing our idea, each use case is sketched by choosing the best-fitted pattern. In order to create an instance of a use case, the analyst has to provide some specific information (3), e.g., values of parameters. This process is semi-automatic, because user has to approve pattern for use case and can modify every element of it. Finally, the analyst obtain a sketch of a use case, which can be treated as a baseline for further discussions.