Use case composition

One of the best features of UCTool is its support for functional decomposition of use cases via HTML links.

Once you write a use case at a given level of detail, say at the user goal level, its steps will often represent use cases of one level lower, like sub-function.

In UCTool you can simply refer from such a step to the lower-level use case. This reference makes the step a clickable HTML link leading to the lower-level use case.

For example, you have just finished drafting "Transfer funds" use case in its main success scenario:

<use-case goal="Transfer funds" code="NCA-100" level="sea">
        <success>
                <step>User identifies debit account.</step>
                <step>User identifies credit account.</step>
                <step>User enters amount.</step>
                <step>User submits the transaction.</step>
        </success>
</use-case>

Now you realize, that the first and second steps should actually unfold to a new sub-function use case "Identify account". So, you add the new use case and create links to it from the two steps:

<use-case goal="Transfer funds" code="NCA-100" level="sea">
        <success>
                <step>User <uc-ref code="SYS-100">identifies debit account</uc-ref>.</step>
                <step>User <uc-ref code="SYS-100">identifies credit account</uc-ref>.</step>
                <step>User enters amount.</step>
                <step>User submits the transaction.</step>
        </success>
</use-case>
<use-case goal="Identify account" code="SYS-100" level="fish">
        <success>
                <step>User enters account number.</step>
                <step>System validates account number.</step>
                <step>User searches for the account.</step>
                <step>System retrieves account details by account number.</step>
        </success>
</use-case>

Note: a detailed guideline how to achieve this in Eclipse:
Select the words to become the link ("identifies debit account"), cut them out (Ctrl-X), initiate content assist (Ctrl-space), choose uc-ref, set cursor in-between the start and end tag of the uc-ref element, paste the words back (Ctrl-V), and finally copy&paste the code of the referenced use case (in this case "SYS-100") into the code attribute of uc-ref.

After you re-generate the HTML output, the text within the uc-ref element will become an HTML link to the referred use case.

Moreover, the referred use case will automatically report all the use cases from which it is referred.

Finally, a report of all use cases that are not referred to is compiled as the "Entry point list" page.
So, if you want to hook every use case into some higher level use case, up until a single top-level use case (like "Use the system"), as soon as there is only this top-level use case in the "Entry point list" you know you are done.