Runtime Semantics of Use Case Stories

Direct end-user participation in software system construction necessitates bringing general-purpose programming activities to the level understandable by "laymen". This paper introduces a new software development approach where stories written in commonly understood structured natural language gain runtime semantics. Stories are precisely linked to domain concepts and actions, thus forming the application logic of the system. These constructs are written at a high level of abstraction, very close to detailed software requirements specifications. In fact, they are structured into familiar use case models that include special "invocation" relationships between use cases. At the same time, the paper proposes precise translational semantics for such defined stories. For each story element, equivalent Java code is derived. This semantics has been implemented within a tool containing a story editor and a code generator producing fully dynamic application logic code with Swing-based user interface. Ease of use of the new story language and usefulness of the generated Java code has been evaluated through student assignment projects.