Bridging the gap between Use Case Analysis and Class Structure Design by Formal Concept Analysis
Stephan Düwel, Wolfgang Hesse · 2001
The early stages of software development are increasingly supported by object-oriented analysis and design (OOA/OOD) techniques. Recent methodologies suggest to combine Jacobson's use case analysis with modelling techniques for class/object structure, object behaviour and process interaction. However, the choice and definition of objects and classes in the domain space is not supported by either of these techniques but left to the intuition of the analyst(s). Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is a mathematical theory which offers support for analysing and visualising conceptual relationships by lattice diagrams. It is shown how FCA can successfully be applied to bridge the gap between the mentioned techniques: It starts with an analysis of the formal context given by use cases and the relevant "things" involved in these cases. It produces a lattice visualised by a line diagram which is used as a design and decision aid for building an appropriate class/object structure. This structure is a prerequisite for further modelling steps, e.g. modelling of processes by sequence diagrams.