Grouper Developers Forum

["Paul B. Hill" <>]

Hi,

I wonder if this thread might be more appropriate for the ITANA list?


http://www.itana.org/
https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/itana/Home

But since the thread currently resides here, how many people that are 
using UML tools are using any of the round-trip engineering features in 
actual practice? From talking to some peers I have concluded that few 
people are using such functionality on an on-going basis or with any 
regularity. Although, it appears that many people have selected their 
tool based on this being in the feature set.

The few people that I have found that have used the feature more than 
once, tend to use it to build an initial model of existing code when 
they first inherit the responsibility for an existing application or 
service. If people are really using the round-trip features I would be 
interested in hearing about it.

I also wonder how many people are sharing their UML models with others 
beyond just displaying them at some meetings as a way to initiate 
discussion? The small number of groups that I have seen that actually 
treat the model as a living diagram and update it over time tend to pass 
the diagram around for updating, which has caused them to focus on one 
somewhat ubiquitous tool, although nobody thinks it is a great UML tool 
(Visio).

So ignoring the typical marketing features, what are the features that 
people really consider the key requirements in a UML tool?

Paul

Dave Donnelly wrote:
> I conducting an informal survey about which UML tools people
> are using and some indication of suitability.
>
> I am currently using Jude-Community from Change Vision
> (http://jude.change-vision.com/jude-web/index.html). On a
> scale of A to F, I would give it a C+. It's easy to use
> but does not support round-trip engineering. Also the
> print capability is rather limited. However, the free
> version does most of the things I require.
>
> Other tools I have used:
>
> Rational Rose from IBM
> link: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/developer/rose/index.html
> grade (A-F): A
> comments: Excellent UML tool if you can afford it. The last time I used
> it was about 5 years ago.
>
> EclipseUML from Omondo
> link: http://www.omondo.com/
> grade: B- and falling
> comments: Nice integration with Eclipse IDE (I use Eclipse).
> Stopped using it because as new free versions were released, they
> started removing more and more functionality. Also, EclipseUML
> was _very_ sensitive to versions of other Eclipse plugins making
> it difficult to upgrade either. The last time I used it was
> about 2 years ago.
>
> TogetherJ from Borland
> link: http://www.borland.com/us/products/together/index.html
> grade: (not enough experience with the product)
> comments: I used this briefly about 4 years ago. It seems to be
> on par with Rational Rose in functionality and price.
>
> ArgoUml
> link: http://argouml.tigris.org/
> grade: (see comments)
> comments: I could not get ArgoUML to run reliably on either of 2
> computers. Not only did it crash, it required a power-down/reboot
> to recover (and just to set the record straight, this occurred on
> both Windows and Linux). Used it about 4 years ago.
>
> Poseidon from Gentleware
> link: http://www.gentleware.com/
> grade: C+
> comments: This is a commercial product based on ArgoUML but a free
> version is available. Not as buggy as ArgoUML. Round-trip engineering
> is supported using comment blocks. This can cause problems if you use
> other development tools (e.g. Eclipse's Java comment generation tool).