Developing Applications with Java™ and UML

Weighting Use-Cases

Now let's consider the use-cases. The primary feature of the use-cases that we judge is their pathways. The number of pathways determines the weighting factor. The pathways consist of both the happy path and the alternate pathways through the use-case. In addition, if there are many primary exception pathways, these should also be included. If the exceptions are incidental or simple error situations, don't consider them. Remember the story I told in Chapter 4: For some applications, errors are more important than the happy path.

One area where I modify the approach used by Karner is the inclusion of includes, extends, and generalize extensions on the use-case diagram. Karner elects not to include these, but this is a concern ...