MIS 3510, Systems Analysis & Design * Instructor: Bob Travica

Class Exercise Chapter 6 Thinking Critically 1. (modified) The following represents system requirements for information system in a university library. Based on the requirements, create the following: b. Draw a use case diagram of a Library Materials Management System d. Write a brief use case description of one use case of your choice. The library must keep track of books as these are purchased, catalogued in the library, circulated to library users (patrons), and eventually discarded when they wear out. Patrons have access to the library catalog to search the book catalogue and to see whether a book is available. A patron can also reserve a title if all copies are checked out. Patrons can get a book on a loan, and a circulation clerk will help them to do this by running a check out procedure. The circulation clerk checks books in once these are returned. The stocking clerk keeps track of the arrival of new books and enters the titles into the library catalogue. The library manager has their own activities. They need to print out reports of book titles by category. They also like to see what books are on reserve and what books are overdue. When a book gets damaged or destroyed, the manager deletes the record for that copy of the book from the catalogue.

b. Use Case Diagram of Library Materials Management System

Some options:

Checking in and out functions could be thought of in more general terms, as being parts of a circulation function. The circulation function could then be linked to Patron, to show the relationship that indeed exists (patron provides the input data flow for Check out book and usually gets a receipt as the output; Patron also provides input for Check in book). If there is the use case Circulation, then Check in book and Check out book extend Circulation. Wording: Notice that the term information is associated with book in use cases of entering and deleting book-related data. In contrast, the system requirements use the term record in association with the latter use case and book title in association with the former. The term record could be the best choice, technically speaking. But there is a leeway, as shown in the diagram.

The way to go is to check with the users if the object is the same when the creation and deletion function is applied, and then to use a chosen term for that object consistently in the diagram (using a compromise term that combines two or more terms users really use on the job is also an good idea).

Is there a relationship between the use case View overdue books and Check out books? The question is logical because some books checked out may be overdue. The answer is: no. technically, a list of overdue books can be generated from a file of all checked out books by comparing the attribute DueDate with the current date. But from the perspective of use case diagramming, the relevant question is, does either of the analyzed use cases include the other or extends the other? The include relationship apparently has no place since View overdue books is an action Manager takes arbitrarily, or Check out books executes without View overdue books. The extend relationship might look sensible, but not really when you think about it. The View overdue books is a separate function that cannot be reasoned about like this: if a patron checks out a book, the overdue book report may be created. Be careful not to engage process thinking in use case diagramming or to assume that relationships between use cases exist because one provides some input data for another.

Use Case Diagram of Library Materials Management System Subsystems Shown

Explanation: A library information system (IS) usually consists of several ISes or modules (sub-systems) if an integrated software package is implemented. The functions discussed in this exercise fall within the two type of IS the Catalog (Catalogue) and the Circulation.