Use Case Maps for the Design and the Validation of Interaction-Free
Telephony Features
Daniel Amyot, November
13, 1998.
Warning: This report is not public domain yet. Please,
do not distribute unless autorized by the author.
Abstract
Functional scenarios describing system views, uses, or services are a common
way of capturing requirements of telecommunication systems. However, integrating
individual descriptions of telephony features in different ways may result
in different kinds of unexpected or undesirable interactions. Appropriate
integration techniques can hopefully lead to fewer such interactions. In
this report, we first present how a collection of features integrated visually
through causal scenarios called Use Case Maps (UCMs) may help generating
high-level LOTOS specifications. Integrating UCMs together helps avoiding
trivial and artificial interactions before any prototype is generated.
Then, we use the powerful testing concepts and tools of LOTOS to detect
remaining undesirable interactions. To illustrate these concepts, we capture
and validate a subset of the telephony features from the First Feature
Interaction Contest. We discuss the results of this experiment, as well
as strengths and weaknesses of our methodology.
Key words
Causal scenario, feature interaction, integration, LOTOS, specification-level
validation, testing, Use Case Maps.
Report
LOTOS Specification
Presentation
At Mitel, on October 20, 1998
damyot@csi.uottawa.ca, last
modification: June 4, 1999