Some General Comments on Homework #1, CSCI 5931A, Fall 1998

• Back up your work.
• Be gentle.  Don't overuse the quota.
• May use ‘right mouse button' and then ‘option' to hide the attributes and/or operation compartments.
• Top level use cases should not show too much details.
• Don't confuse a use case with a ‘data store'.  E.g. ‘administrator information', ‘comment', ‘system utilities' not suitable use case names.
• An output item may not need to be modeled as a class, e.g. VotingResult, It may also be included for efficiency purposes.
• Remember, in database modeling, focus on persistent classes and associations (not view, see, etc).
• Association's cardinality must be specified.
• Association names or roles should be specified.
• Classes and use cases should be documented – must at least include a definition.
• Should not store use case diagrams and class diagrams in two separate .mdl files.
• If two classes A and B are associated, it is redundant to include the id of A as an attribute of B.
• In database modeling, only associations and classes that need to be stored are modeled as persistent objects.
• Do not confuse use case diagrams with data flow diagrams.
• Follow the mapping guideline closely.
• Do not use generic class and association names with not much meaning.  E.g. has, use, view, see, system, utility, etc.