Re: [ormf-dev] Evaluation and selection of UML modelling tool

[Richard Gronback <richard.gronback@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: [ormf-dev] Evaluation and selection of UML modelling tool

That’s quite the list of requirements you’ve put in the bug.  I’m not sure such a tool exists, although perhaps you can get licenses to use a commercial tool for free?  I might know one or two that meet your needs.

My other questions would be on how you expect to use the UML.  Do you really intend to use all diagram types?  FWIW, UML2 Tools will soon support Sequence Diagrams, though reverse engineering is not planned.  Having used a tool that does a nice job of reverse engineering sequence diagrams from code, how often do you really expect to use this functionality?  From my experience, it’s difficult to get meaningful sequence diagrams directly from code, though it certainly can be done (they sure look impressive when generated, at first ;).

Also, if you’re also planning to be model-driven and use a collection of DSLs, I expect Ecore Tools or the GMF Ecore diagram will be sufficient for those models.  If you augment these with some UML2 Tools diagrams for communicating the rest of the system, would this not be sufficient?  Without having the whole team bought into using UML and taking advantages of a full-blown UML modeling tool/environment, it might be best to start small.

HTH,
Rich


On 10/17/08 4:19 AM, "Joel Rosi-Schwartz" <Joel.Rosi-Schwartz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Certainly there is one amongst us who would be proud to take this on their shoulders :-)

Kidding aside, is the lack of response here that the team in general does not believe that modelling adds value to the project? Possibly that is subject that we should be discussing prior to which modeller to use.

Joel

On 13 Oct 2008, at 15:25, Joel Rosi-Schwartz wrote:

Hi,

I would very much like for the entire ORMF team to embrace modelling as both an aid to analysis and design and for documentation. The issue is what tool do we use. The two obvious choices are the eclipse UML2 Tools and Topcased.
 

 
The issues with UML2 are that it does not support reverse engineering nor sequence diagrams. This limits its usefulness as a long term complete solution.
 

 
I have tried Topcased <http://topcased.gforge.enseeiht.fr/> UML2 Tools. I find that it has usability issues and was also not able to successfully create class models from the reverse engineered model of a fairly simply one plug-in, 6 package, 12 class project. Halfway into walking through the packages it threw a transformation exception. This was using their latest RCP standalone version on Windows, so it is not local configuration issue.
 

 
With Topcased there is also the consideration that it is aimed at the "Critical systems Topcased is a software environment primarily dedicated to the realisation of critical embedded systems including hardware and/or software." So it surely has complexity that ORMF does not have to buy into.
 

 
If there are recommendations from the team as to other options that would be great.
 

 
What I would like is a team member to pick this up, do whatever research and evaluation is required and report back, so that the team can make a decision.

I have opened a bugzilla issue <https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=250648>  to track this work.

Thanks,
Joel
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