Producing a Use Case Report with Report Writer

1. Download the project Online Shop.vpp attached with this tutorial.
2. Start VP-UML.
3. Open Online Shop.vpp in VP-UML.
4. We will write a report for the use case diagram modeled in this project. Let's checkout what was modeled. Open use case diagram Online Shop and study the diagram content. The diagram involves two use cases - Register and Buy Item.
5. Let's take a look at the flow of events defined for the use case Register. Right click on Register and select Open Use Case Details... from the popup menu.
   
6. Open the tab Flow of Events. The steps required to accomplish the use case was written there.
   
7. We will write a report in the structure as shown in the following image. Let's take a look:
   
8. Now, select Tools > Report > Report Writer... from the main menu.
9. In the Report Engine Installation dialog box, keep the option Download from the Internet selected and click OK. If you have already downloaded and installed report engine, you can skip this step.
   
10. Let the download run itself. When completed, click Close to continue with validation and installation. After the installation, click Close to start the report writer. Note that it takes some time to start report writer the first time. Be patient and wait for the Templates dialog box to appear.
11. In the Templates dialog box, enter the following information:
    

    Field	Value
    Company Name	Hello World Online Shop
    Report Name	Online Shop Use Case Report
    Report Type	Use Case Report
    Object Name
    Issue No.	A-001

12. Select Lotus to be the document theme and click OK to continue.
    
13. A new report is created with fields like company name, report name, report type, object name and issue number pre-set.
    
    

    Region	Description
    1	The menu bar where all the functions can be found and triggered.
    2	The toolbar where common functions can be triggered.
    3	The Diagram Navigator / Model Explorer where project data are listed.
    4	The template pane where template are listed according to the selection in Diagram Navigator / Model Explorer.
    5	The editing document.

14. Scroll down the document to the final page, where we want to start writing our report.
15. We want to first create a diagram image of the use case diagram. Select the diagram Online Shop in Diagram Navigator.
    
16. The template pane is updated with all the templates you can create for a use case diagram listed. Press on the template Use Case Diagram. Drag to the report and drop below the report name.
    
17. We want to list the shapes on the diagram. Select the template Children. Again, drag and drop to the report, below the image:
    
    Up to now the report should look like this:
    
18. Move on to the use cases. We want to report the use cases' flow of events. Let's start from use case Register. Select it in Diagram Navigator. Then, select Basic Information in the template pane.
    
19. Drag and drop Basic Information to report, below the Children table just created. The report should look like this:
    
20. Select template Flow of Events. Drag and drop below Basic Information. The report should look like this:
    
21. Report steps 18 to 20 on use case Buy Item. Up to now, the report should look like this:
    
    You can see that nothing is presented under the section Flow of Events of use case Buy Item. This is because the flow of events was not written yet.
22. Now, switch to the VP-UML window. In use case diagram, right click on use case Buy Item and select Open Use Case Details... from the popup menu.
    
23. Define the flow of events as shown in the image below.
    
24. We want to refresh the report content to show the flow of events just defined. Instead of re-creating everything, we can perform an update to let the report refresh itself to reflect the latest project data. Click on button Update from Model Element in report writer.
    
    You can see that the Flow of Events section is now filled.
    
25. Click on the Save Report button in toolbar. This is the end of the tutorial.
    

Resources

1. Online Shop.vpp