Report

Use Cases and User Scenarios

(PAS)

Document Contents

Development of the Anglo-Saxon Cluster was directed by a set of Use Cases and User Scenarios. These are designed to envisage the possible tasks that a user may wish to do with the Cluster. Not all of these are feasible, as discussed in the following pages (see particularly Limitations), but they help the developers plan the Cluster as a whole.

Use Cases

The Use Cases were developed first by the project analyst and then discussed with domain specialists; they take the form first of example research questions which an Anglo-Saxonist may wish to ask of the constituent projects. They revealed several types of query which a user may wish to execute, and these types can be categorised by their return values. They are designed to require information from at least two different projects in the Cluster. They are given below, along with the different projects that they query. See also the example searches in Searching the Cluster and Invalid Searches.

No. Research Question Projects Link Comments
1 Give me information about the Æthelred who appears in charters issued by King Edward the Confessor, along with summaries of the charters he appears in. eSawyer, PASE N/A Mixes return types: Person and Charter
1a Give me information about the Ealdred who appears in charters issued by King Edward the Confessor eSawyer, PASE N/A What role? Currently you must specify which role the person has (witness, issuer, etc.), although this restriction could be removed in future.
1b Give me information about the charters attested by Ealdred issued by King Edward the Confessor eSawyer, PASE View in ASCluster Note that this finds all occurrences of the name 'Ealdred' in witness lists.
1c Give me information about the charters in which Archbishop Ealdred is a witness issued by King Edward the Confessor eSawyer, PASE View in ASCluster Note that we need to know already that Archbishop Ealdred is 'Ealdred 37' in PASE.
2 Give me all charters issued for land in Dorset during Cnut's reign which are attested by the Earl of Mercia eSawyer, LangScape PASE N/A Who is the 'Earl of Mercia'? This is a role, not a single person.
How do we know when Cnut reigned?
2a Give me summaries of all charters issued for land in Dorset issued by King Cnut which are attested by Earl Leofric of Mercia. eSawyer, LangScape, PASE N/A County information comes from LangScape, but LangScape only knows about charters with bounds.
2b Give me summaries of all charters issued with bounds for land in Dorset during Cnut's reign which are attested by Earl Leofric of Mercia eSawyer, LangScape, PASE View in ASCluster Again, we must know already that Earl Leofric of Mercia is 'Leofric 49'.
3 Give me (list, plot on map) all the estates granted to Harold Godwineson. eSawyer, LangScape, PASE N/A Locations and names of estates are available only for those with bounds.
3a Give me (list, plot on map) all the estates with bounds granted to Harold Godwineson. eSawyer, LangScape, PASE View in ASCluster
4 Give me all the issuers/beneficiaries of charters with invocations beginning 'Aio et alto domino Deo'. ASChart, eSawyer, PASE N/A Invocation text: currently there is no scope for searching text. This may be provided in future.
4a Give me the invocations of all charters issued by King Alfred to Chertsey Abbey. ASChart, eSawyer, PASE View in Cluster
4b Give me the invocations of all charters issued by King Alfred stored in the archive of Chertsey Abbey. ASChart, eSawyer View in Cluster
5 Plot on a map all the estates issued to Harold Godwineson, issued by the Bishop of Worcester. eSawyer, LangScape, PASE N/A Who was the Bishop of Worcester?
5a Plot on a map all the estates issued to Harold Godwineson, issued by Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester. eSawyer, LangScape, PASE View in ASCluster Bishops as issuers not in eSawyer; PASE data ambiguous.
Note that PASE queries are not yet available
6 List the hidages of all estates with surviving bounds granted to Bishop Ælfstan by King Edward 'the Martyr'. eSawyer, LangScape, PASE View in ASCluster
6a List all estates with surviving bounds granted to Bishop Ælfstan by King Edward 'the Martyr'. eSawyer, LangScape, PASE View in ASCluster
7 List the beneficiaries, in order of total hidages granted, of grants of land in Worcestershire. LangScape, PASE N/A Mixed return type (beneficiaries and hidages). No hidage information except for land with bounds.
7a List the hidages of grants of land with bounds in Worcestershire. LangScape, PASE N/A Hidage queries are not yet available but are supported by the model and could be made available in future.
7b List the kings who have issued grants of land with bounds in Worcestershire. LangScape, PASE View in ASCluster
8 Show all the manuscripts containing invocations issued by Kings Cnut and Harthacnut, ordered by date ASChart, eSawyer N/A Mixed return type (invocation, date)
8a Show all the manuscripts containing invocations issued by Kings Cnut and Harthacnut ASChart, eSawyer N/A Cnut and Harthacnut are eleventh-century, but ASChart only gives invocations up to the ninth century.
8b Show all the manuscripts containing invocations issued by King Cenwulf of Mercia ASChart, eSawyer View in ASCluster

This list of example searches was then used to design the Query Language and to test the resulting system. To assist this process further, a set of Use Case diagrams were created using UML. These are a further way of illustrating different ways in which users might interact with the Cluster and its constituent parts, and how the Cluster and parts might respond to such interactions. They can be found in the Appendix to this report. It should be noted that these Use Case diagrams represent more advanced functionality than could be implemented in the scope of this project and instead show ways in which the Cluster could be developed in future.

User Scenarios

In addition to the specific queries given above, more general scenarios were also developed which describe what users might wish to do with the Cluster and how they might be expected to interact with it. These were drawn up principally to help us develop the functionality of the system. They were also complemented by Use Case diagrams and Collaboration diagrams. These are further tools which help us to communicate first the sequence of steps that users might take (Use Case diagrams), and second how the different components of the Cluster might communicate in order to fulfil the users' requests (Collaboration diagrams).

Searching

User wishes to find a given item, based on some criteria:

  1. User goes to search page
  2. User enters search criteria
  3. Cluster processes query
    1. Cluster sends search criteria to each project
    2. Each project returns hits
    3. Cluster integrates hits
    4. Cluster displays results to user

See further the two Use Case diagrams, Find Location and Find Texts and two Collaboration diagrams, Collaboration Overview and Search By Location, for this scenario.

Faceted Browsing

  1. Facets: County, King, Kingdom, date, grantor, beneficiary, manuscript, archive, estate name, witness
  2. Facet: Date, using range specified by timeline
  3. Facet: Location, using map
    • Plot distribution of hits: Faceted browse + map display + timeline (see Mockups)

Browse grants to Earl Leofric of land in Worcestershire:

  1. User - Faceted browse: Beneficiary
    • Cluster - Filters on beneficiary by querying eSawyer
  2. User - Faceted browse: County
    • Cluster - Filters on county by querying PASE
  3. Cluster - Matching records returned in 'Summary' view
    • Cluster - Summary view generated by querying all

Browse grants issued by King Edgar with distribution on map

  1. User - Faceted browse: King
    • Cluster - Queries from eSawyer
  2. Cluster - Show distribution
    • Cluster - Queries coordinates from PASE then eSawyer

Show how geographical distribution of lands change by time

  1. User - Browse: Show All (no facets selected)
  2. User - View map and timeline
    1. Cluster - Queries coordinates from PASE, dates from eSawyer
    2. Cluster - Shows map and timeline

Show bias in geographical distribution by scholars in bibliography

  1. User - Search bibliography by author
  2. Cluster - Query projects for summary of charters by author
  3. Cluster - Shows map
    • Cluster - Map coords from PASE + eSawyer

View Charter

User wishes to view all material about a given charter

  1. Do 'Find Charter'
  2. Displays content from all sources in mashup (for which see Mockups)