Free UML Tools

[crelf]

I'd like folks to list their favorite UML tools here, including pros and cons of each package. Once enough of them are listed, I'll post a poll to help others wanting to get into UML make an educated decision (I might even tie the packages together into a LAVA Knowledge Base article). Feel free to discuss the packages posted here too. Please format your responses something like:

Name: <insert name here>

Website: <insert a direct link to the website here>

License: <insert license terms here - per seat, per site, per project, open-source, free, shareware, etc>

Description: <include a general introduction, the comprehensiveness of the tool, ease of use, why you use UML (just to document, to heavily design for multiple developers, etc), anything else you think is important>

How Long: <how long you've been using the tool - eg: 2 years>

How Often: <every project, only large projects, once every now-and-then...>

How Many: <multi-developer teams using it? just you?>

Pros: <what's good about it?>

Cons: <what's a pain-in-the-arse>

Notes: <does it tie in directly with other tools (incl. LabVIEW)? Anything that doesn't fit in the other categories>

[PaulG.]

First place I looked: Wikipedia, Unified Modeling Lanquage

Not really a "tool" but a quick summary of UML, pros and cons. A real eye-opener. I have a feeling you and I are going to have some discussions regarding this. I'm all for GOOP. It makes sense and my attitude and style have naturally been leading me in that direction. However, UML, at first glance, seems to be a little more complicated than it needs to be. I'll withhold judgment until I've worked with it for a while. Until then, expect me to ask a lot of questions and have a few opinions.

[crelf]

First place I looked: Wikipedia, Unified Modeling Lanquage

Not really a "tool" but a quick summary of UML, pros and cons.

This is, indeed, an excellent place to look if you're not UML initiated. Maybe we should create and shift this part of the conversation to a new thread about the pros and cons of UML, as opposed to its' tools, so we don't confuse the two? What do you think Mike?

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

I'd like folks to list their favorite UML tools here, including pros and cons of each package.

I don't know if it's really my favorite but I've been using Microsoft Visio Professional 2003 as it's part of our Academic site license for no extra cost. It can be used to draw many types of UML diagrams, altough I've mainly used it for drawing class hierarchy and class relation diagrams. I think too detailed UML modelling is not necessary, more important is to keep the UML models up-to-date as the design changes during the development phase.

[crelf]

I don't know if it's really my favorite but I've been using Microsoft Visio Professional 2003 as it's part of our Academic site license for no extra cost.

Thanks for the info jimi, but can you give us some more information please? What about Visio makes it a good UML modelling utility, and not just a diagram drawing package (we can do that in Word or Paint if we really want to)? Also, I'd appreciate it if you formatted your post in the way I suggested - that will make it much easier for people to compare package differences.

[PaulG.]

This is, indeed, an excellent place to look if you're not UML initiated. Maybe we should create and shift this part of the conversation to a new thread about the pros and cons of UML, as opposed to its' tools, so we don't confuse the two? What do you think Mike?

Didn't mean to redirect the conversation. UML is fairly new to me. I might be dangerous with any UML tools.

PaulG. looking up UML and UML tools. "I'll be back".

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

Thanks for the info jimi, but can you give us some more information please? What about Visio makes it a good UML modelling utility, and not just a diagram drawing package (we can do that in Word or Paint if we really want to)? Also, I'd appreciate it if you formatted your post in the way I suggested - that will make it much easier for people to compare package differences.

Sorry Crelf, my answer just didn't fit to the form you gave. I have no experience on other tools. I cannot compare Visio against other tools. I really don't know if it is especially good or bad. However it does the thing for our 1-3 developer projects.

Name: Microsoft Visio

Website:

Official: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio/default.aspx

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visio

License: Commercial license, academic institutions get large discounts

Description: Fairly simple to use yet quite powerful tool for drawing various kinds of UML diagrams (and lots of other things as well). Has lots of UML components to built the UML diagrams up from. I've been using the tool in fairly simple projects and mainly to define class hierarchies and class relations but not anything else although it should be powerful enough to be used with quite complicated UML diagrams. Recent versions of Visio Enterprise Architecht integrate with MS Visual Studio to allow automatic code generation from UML diagram and automatic UML diagram generation from code, naturally however LabVIEW is not one of the supported languages.

How Long: 2 years

How Often: Every major OOP project

How Many: 1-3

Pros: Easy to integrate with Word documents and Powerpoint presentations. However, I really cannot answer this questions as I don't have experience on other tools except pen and paper.

Cons: I don't have experience on other tools except pen and paper.

Notes: There are multiple different versions of Visio available. The one I use is Visio 2003 Professional. Purchase a license for the one that meets your demands. Enterprise Architecht is the most powerfult one. It may be that Visio and the Visio UML Package ships currently with the Visual Studio 2005. I'm not certain if UML package ships with newest versions of stand-alone Visio or does one need to purchase it with Visual Studio license. There is no LabVIEW Advanced Virtual Architect version available yet...

[crelf]

Name: Microsoft Visio

:thumbup: thanks jimi!

[Omar Mussa]

Name: Microsoft Visio

While it may be better in the latest version of VISIO, as of VISIO 2000 it seemed to me like the UML aspect of VISIO was not well exposed through the ActiveX interface so it was difficult to reverse engineer (or even more ambitiously forward engineer) LabVIEW code.

[Jeffrey Habets]

I've used DIA in the past and still do sometimes, but mainly I use Endevo's UML modeller now. So I'll list them both here. I use UML mainly to model the class diagrams. If classes designed by me are to be implemented by others I might also use sequence diagrams to describe the interaction between classes.

One other tool I've been wanting to have a go with is ArgoUML (http://argouml.tigris.org/), which is also opensource. No experiences with ArgoUML yet, so I won't list it here.

Name: DIA

Website: http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/

License: Open source, GPL

Description: From the DIA site: "Dia is inspired by the commercial Windows program 'Visio', though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape."

How Long: 4 years

How Often: Some projects involving GOOP

How Many: Just me

Pros: It's open source and free to use. Easy to use, short learning curve. The diagrams are stored in XML!

Cons: For people that are not used to Gnome or programs written with Gtk toolkit the userinterface might take some getting used to.

Notes: There are code generation modules for DIA for several textual programming languages, but not for LabVIEW. This could be done though, since the diagrams are saved as XML data and are not so difficult to parse. I once started work on a tool to read the diagram data and create GOOP classes from it, but stopped working on it when Endevo introduced their UML modeller.

Name: UML Modeller

Website: http://www.endevo.se/content/view/10/13/lang,en/

License: Commercial, I think it is about $500.00, but you'll also need their GOOP Inheritance toolkit if you want the benefit of code-generation.

Description: The modeller is written in LabVIEW and thus integrates seamlessly with LabVIEW. It runs from the LabVIEW dev. environment and uses the Endevo GOOP Wizard for code generation from classdiagrams and reverse engineering to update your UML from the LV GOOP classes. I think the next version will also support native LabVIEW classes. Other UML diagrams like e.g. Use case, State diagram, sequence diagram, etc. are also supported.

How Long: 3-4 years

How Often: Most projects involving GOOP (Allmost all my project involve GOOP..)

How Many: Just me

Pros: Very easy to use, short learning curve. Integration in LabVIEW. Code generation and reverse engineering!! Developers take good note of user input to improve the tool.

Cons: Not cheap, together with the Inheritance toolkit it's about $1700.00

Notes: Despite the costs I still think the tools are worth it since the code generation and reverse engineering is quite a time ( = money) saver..

[crelf]

Has anyone got any other UML tools to add to the list?

[leblanc]

if your not planning on using visio I recommend:

http://argouml.tigris.org/

bsd license + my favorite license type!!

I've used it to create object diagrams: inheritance, aggregation, composition, interafaces, abstracts

sequence diagrams to describe when when objects are created and how they interact in respect to time.

state diagrams ... although visio creates nicer ones here.

use cases - for powerpoints presentations

in reality a uml package should be able to generate code. I've used argo for that sometimes. must mostly use it for planning/designing. code generation might be better in visio but sometimes setting all the properties .. consume to much time and you don't put enough time in brainstorming. I don't like visio just cuz it looks ugly and license .. although i have it free like all my other software.

[Jim Kring]

QUOTE(crelf @ Feb 26 2007, 10:39 AM)

Has anyone got any other UML tools to add to the list?

We use http://www.sparxsystems.com/' target="_blank">Enterprise Architect from Sparx Systems.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to complete the entire questionnaire (per, this topic), but rest assured, it's a great tool and it's well worth the price ($125 to $239 a seat).