This paper describes a case study of an ACE application, the gateway, in which we reverse engineer gateway code and associated documentation into a use case map model. WARNING: This was our first attempt at generating a use case map model for this example and suffers from an unfortunate (in restrospect) choice of a stub in one of the main diagrams. The stub was an attempt to simplify the presentation by separating it into parts, but the way we did it seems arbitrary to other people (and to us, in retrospect), and muddies the waters of the explanation. See Vir Lib Uoof 1997 for a cleaner model and explanation.

Abstract

Two major problems in the engineering of software-intensive, real time and distributed computer systems are, without becoming lost in code details, I) understanding how an implemented system works as a whole, and II) specifying, before implementation starts, how the required behaviour of the whole system is to be achieved. These lead to other problems, such as, long iteration cycles during forward engineering while various code changes are tried in attempts to fix erroneous system behaviour, and inadvertently introducing code changes during maintenance or reengineering that will damage correct system behaviour because there is a lack of backwards traceability to it from the code. This paper illustrates the application of a new technique called use case maps to solving these problems, using as an example a system constructed from a publicdomain, object-oriented, software framework called ACE.

-- Gunter Mussbacher - 13 Oct 2005

Discussion

• Please feel free to discuss this article directly on this page. Constructive comments are welcomed! Please sign your TWiki name.