UML - Distinction between user and administrator use cases of the same nature

Question

There's something that's been bothering me while attempting to do a use case diagram.

Both users and administrators can manage articles, both can manage categories, both can carry out crud operations on all of those BUT the administrator has control on every single item whereas a user is limited to a subset of these items.

Should/can a distinction be made in a use case diagram so this is clear?

Answer 1

From the sounds of thing the use cases are the same.

The devil could be contained in the detail of the activity and the scenarios associated with these use cases. These could define the role specific operations, or change in operations of the system in reaction to this role.

You could define them as separate use cases (but this doesn't sound right as you say, it's the same action for both, just with different limits to the action) or, make sure that authentication and the current user role is clearly defined as a predecessor to the above use cases. If you definitely want this information displayed in that diagram in particular.

This has some pretty good use case diagrams with users in different roles

Answer 2

Your "use case" seems to need to be separate in smaller "use cases", some of those "use cases" are the same for admin. and standard-user, some not.

Answer 3

It seems that your admin is a special user with some extra capabilities. You may use genaralization relationship between User and Admin actors then admin automatically do what user can do and show just extra features which admin benefits from the system.

USER ---> (manage articles )

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ADMIN ---> (Cretae new User)