[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-665500-105":59,"doc-detail-665500-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","semantic-differencing-of-use-case-diagrams-research-article","Semantic Differencing of Use Case Diagrams - Research Article","","Use case diagrams (UCDs) describe how users achieve system goals through software functionality, but increasing system size and the presence of variants make it hard to determine how behaviors differ from stakeholders’ perspectives. Prior research lacked a UCD language with precise semantics beyond informal notation, which prevented unambiguous meaning comparison. This paper defines formal syntax and semantics for a UCD variant and introduces a semantic differencing operator, validated experimentally on example diagrams.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/semantic-differencing-of-use-case-diagrams-research-article/665500/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/semantic-differencing-of-use-case-diagrams-research-article/665500.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Jasmine","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-10-29",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":19},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why is semantic differencing for use case diagrams difficult with existing approaches?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Because earlier work treated UCDs mainly as high-level stick-figure and bubble representations without well-defined syntax or formal semantics, making diagram meanings hard to distinguish reliably.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What does the paper contribute regarding UCDs?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It provides a mathematically precise definition of a UCD modeling language, including reduced abstract syntax, a scenario-based semantic domain, and a semantics mapping from each UCD to the scenarios it describes.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How does the proposed semantic differencing operator work and what does it output?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Given two UCDs, it outputs all scenarios contained in the semantics of one UCD that are not contained in the semantics of the other, supporting identification of meaning differences between versions or variants.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},665500,1793304516,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":19,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":129,"read_time":144},2336478487870,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_085a072bc5b1113ac321206ff7593b45","Journal of Object Technology | RESEARCH ARTICLE  \nSemantic Differencing of Use Case Diagrams  \nOliver Kautz∗ , Bernhard Rumpe†, and Louis Wachtmeister†  \n∗ CBC Cologne Broadcasting Center GmbH, Germany † RWTH Aachen University, Germany  \nABSTRACT Use case diagrams (UCDs) are widely used for describing how different users use the functionalities of a system to achieve their goals. As today’s software systems offer an ever-increasing number of functionalities, it becomes more and more difficult for software engineers to decide how the behaviors of different systems, various versions, or system variants differ from the stakeholders’ points of views. Notwithstanding the importance of UCDs in addressing this challenge, previous work neglected the development of a definition of an UCD language with a precise semantics that goes beyond a high-level representation of stick figures with bubbles. Since these representations neither have a well-defined syntax nor a formal semantics, clearly distinguishing the meanings of two diagrams becomes difficult. To tackle this challenge, this paper defines a formal syntax and semantics for a UCD variant and presents a semantic differencing operator that we evaluated experimentally with a set of example diagrams.  \nKEYWORDS Use Case, Use Case Diagram, Semantic Differencing, Semantics, Analysis, Evolution, Difference, Model, UML  \n1. Introduction  \nUse case diagrams (UCDs) describe the functionalities of a system in terms of how its various users achieve their goals by using the system (Friedenthal et al. 2014) . Because of their simplicity and clarity, UCDs are not only used in the development of complex software systems, but also for system development in general.  \nAs the complexity of software systems continues to increase (France & Rumpe 2007 ; Pretschner et al. 2007 ; Hölldobleret al. 2019), it is a growing challenge for software engineers to maintain an overview of the functionality of the software systems under development. This also means that deciding to what extent two software systems differ from the stakeholders points of views is becoming increasingly complicated. This is especially important when comparing two different versions or two different variants of the same system.  \nApart from comparing variants of the same systems, it is also essential to draw conclusions about the compatibility and  \nJOT reference format:  \nOliver Kautz, Bernhard Rumpe, and Louis Wachtmeister. Semantic Differencing of Use Case Diagrams. Journal of Object Technology. Vol. 21, No. 3, 2022 . Licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)  \n[http://dx.doi.org/10.5381/jot.2022.21.3.a5](http://dx.doi.org/10.5381/jot.2022.21.3.a5)  \nsuitability of system specifications. Imagine a vendor using UCDs to specify the functionality of an offered system and an acquirer using UCDs to specify the properties of a required system. Both could use a semantic differencing approach to establish beyond doubt what the differences between the offered and required systems are and use the result as the basis for their further negotiations.  \nAnother challenge that arises in the use case context is that small changes to a high-level description may have large effects on the overall system behavior. Knowing the semantic (Maoz et al. 2011c,d, 2012 ; Maoz & Ringert 2015, 2018 ; Kautz & Rumpe 2018a; Kautz 2021) difference between two UCDs supports software engineers in understanding the differences in the functionalities of the systems. It enables them to identify the use case and actor combinations that are possible in the one version but not in the other version.  \nPrevious works neglected providing a well-defined syntax and precisely defined semantics that is required for semantic UCD differencing. For that reason, comparing use case diagrams is often still a syntactic comparison of stick figures and bubbles. Especially, when critical systems are developed with UCDs as a starting point, a p","cbCaiuRSGKtqXvUr","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiuRSGKtqXvUr","pdf",539123,14,"English","# 1. Introduction\n# 2. Motivation\n## 2.1 Semantic differencing with examples\n# 3. Abstract Syntax and Formal Semantics\n# 4. Semantic Differencing Operator\n# 5. Experimental Evaluation\n# 6. Related Work\n# 7. Discussion and Future Work\n# 8. Conclusion","[{\"question\":\"Why is semantic differencing for use case diagrams difficult with existing approaches?\",\"answer\":\"Because earlier work treated UCDs mainly as high-level stick-figure and bubble representations without well-defined syntax or formal semantics, making diagram meanings hard to distinguish reliably.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the paper contribute regarding UCDs?\",\"answer\":\"It provides a mathematically precise definition of a UCD modeling language, including reduced abstract syntax, a scenario-based semantic domain, and a semantics mapping from each UCD to the scenarios it describes.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the proposed semantic differencing operator work and what does it output?\",\"answer\":\"Given two UCDs, it outputs all scenarios contained in the semantics of one UCD that are not contained in the semantics of the other, supporting identification of meaning differences between versions or variants.\"}]","Semantic Differencing of Use Case Diagrams - Research Article | PDF",35]