Visual Modeling Tools |
TUTORIAL OBJECTIVES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Visual Modeling Tools |
DEVELOPMENT OBJECTIVES
ADDED VALUE OF VISUAL MODELING TOOLS
UML tools need to be more that a fancy drawing tool -- how to make better use of modeling tools:
COMMERCIAL VISUAL MODELING TOOLS
Web site : See http://www.microsoft.com .....
Web site : See ....
Capabilities : .... UML modeling is a way to create a dynamic, interactive visual model of an application being developed. The model provides clarity and control over the application and is a time- and money-saving tool for companies racing to deliver extremely reliable products in short timeframes.
System Definition is the process of obtaining a clear understanding of the problem space - such as your business opportunities, user needs, or market environment - and defining an application or system to solve that problem. Incorporating the elements of requirements management, visual modeling, and use-case management, system definition is the first step in constructing viable software solutions.
Rational Test RealTime , with companion product Rational QualityArchitect RealTime uses UML use cases and sequence diagrams to automatically generate test cases. And when tests are completed Rational Test RealTime feeds the results back to the model, so you can visualize the test results.
Benefits : .... Visual modeling for the entire team - improve communications, manage complexity, enable reuse and capture business processes using ONE tool and ONE language.
Powered by Rose - the de-facto visual modeling tool for e-development, with more than one hundred partners delivering integrations and content. For mission critical web-enabled tools, no other solution comes close.
Accelerate through architectural excellence - for .NET, Enterprise Java, or Embedded technology solutions, Rose accelerates implementation with resilient and component-based architectures.
You achieve enormous timesavings, and you enable development and testing teams to work closely together to build your extremely reliable product.
Joint Partnership between Microsoft and Rational
With Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0, developers can rapidly create distributed applications consisting of reusable components. In order to harness this power, developers need to think in terms of business objects and software architectures. Modeling is an essential aspect of making component-based development scaleable for enterprise and Internet applications.
This product family is a true joint effort of Microsoft and Rational. Microsoft brought its expertise in rapid application development tools, and its knowledge of easy-to-learn user interface design. Rational brought its experience in enterprise-scale development tools and its world-leading knowledge of modeling. Together they have produced a family of tools that brings visual modeling directly into the RAD client/server mainstream.
Microsoft Visual Modeler is the entry-level product, designed specifically for the first time modeler. It offers an easy to learn introductory subset of the industry standard Unified Modeling Language (UML) for expressing software design decisions. This allows the individual developer to quickly become productive modeling three-tier architectures with minimum learning time. Wizards provide support for automated Visual Basic code generation and reverse engineering.
Rational Rose for Visual Basic extends Microsoft Visual Modeler with the UML notation that programmers, or teams of programmers need to be successful for the full lifecycle visual component development on enterprise-scale projects.
Three-Tiered Architecture
The dominance of client/server architecture exemplifies this trend towards increasing complexity in development. Along with client/server, a three-tiered architectural approach has become increasing common as a means of dealing with the complexity.
The three-tiered approach calls for a services model comprised of the user interface; the business rules and the data. This approach provides a number of clear advantages over older two-tier architectures, but it also provides a number of challenges
Developers have new options for how to partition applications Reusable business objects must be identified and refined. Decisions need to be made about how objects are assigned to components and how components will be distributed across a network or over the Internet. Applications must continue to meet the changing requirements of business. Teams must be able to cooperate in the building of these applications. Component-based development is changing the nature of application development projects
Design - More Important Than Ever Before
All of these decisions present new opportunities for application development. They come, however, at the cost of increasing complexity. Even small systems can consist of multiple systems of components. Learning how to manage this complexity is the first step in building scaleable systems.
A good design of a software architecture can help developers build this new generation of complex systems. A sound architecture can streamline the development process and insure that an application can be easily changed as requirements change.
Full Software Lifecycle Coverage
Microsoft Visual Modeler and the Rational Rose for Visual Basic share a common code base and as such, offer a totally integrated, fully compatible set of solutions for the Visual Basic programmer. Designs started in MS Visual Modeler can be directly loaded into Rational Rose for Visual Basic with no intermediate steps.
Getting Started
Microsoft Visual Modeler. This is the Learning Edition product. You can start modeling static behaviors for your Visual Basic applications very quickly and easily. Figure 1 depicts this for you graphically. You can create model diagrams using UML, the industry standard modeling language, with explicit support for three-tiered architectures. Visual Modeler allows you to:
Microsoft Visual Modeler Capabilities
The Sophisticated User .....
Microsoft Visual Modeler addresses the needs of the beginner, now for the serious professional -
Rational Rose for Visual Basic
Rational Rose for Visual Basic (Professional Edition) The professional modeling tool for business requirements analysis and design of Visual Basic objects for projects of any size. Rational Rose for Visual Basic extends Visual Modeler for dynamic behaviors, such as business requirements analysis, business scenario analysis with collaboration diagrams, and detailed component design. It includes the Unified Modeling Language, as well as Booch and OMT support. (More information about modeling with UML is available at http://www.rational.com/uml
Additional team support facilities, as well as an open extensibility interface with the capacities for additional language support such as DDL generation for SQLServer are also provided.
The capabilities of the Microsoft Visual Modeler and the Rational Rose/Visual Basic tools are summarized in Figure 2 .
Limitations : ....
Web site : See http://www.rational.com .
Visual UML is an affordable and easy to use yet powerful and full-featured state-of-the-art object-modeling tool that provides complete and comprehensive support for all ten of the diagram types defined in the OMG 1.3 UML (Unified Modeling Language) specifications: Class, Object, Package, Use Case, Collaboration, Component, Deployment, Activity, State and Sequence diagrams. Visual UML can be used for modeling many types of systems, including information systems. Plus, as a result of Visual UML's comprehensive support for Activity, Collaborations, State and Sequence diagrams, the product is suitable for modeling real-time systems.
Visual UML features an integrated model/data dictionary; a consistent, modern, full-featured intuitive user interface; a multiple document interface (MDI); extensive control of chart objects' positioning and appearance; a comprehensive use case editor; import/export/merge model fragments and diagrams; export diagrams to Windows Metafiles (EMF and WMF), BMP, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG and PCX image files; export diagrams to Windows Clipboard, group editing; cut/copy/paste objects; publish models and/or diagrams to HTML; XML interface with DTD; link model and diagram objects to multiple other combinations of diagrams, documents, files and URLs; project/model/diagram explorer; print/export preview; integrated internet connectivity; automated download of product updates; VBScript/JScript 5.1 scripting engines; fully documented automation interface and exposed object model; and much more!
The Visual UML Plus Edition hosts Microsoft Visual Basic for Applicationss (VBA) 6.2. It is available with interfaces to Visual Basic and/or Visual FoxPro. It allows users to create VBA projects and write scripts (aka Macros) to control and extend Visual UML through its fully documented OLE Automation/ActiveX interface and exposed object model.
The Plus Edition of Visual UML incorporates Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) 6.2. This allows users to create VBA projects and write scripts (aka Macros) to control and extend Visual UML through its fully documented OLE Automation/ActiveX interface and exposed object model. Visual UML?s VBA interface supports the following:
Web site : See http://www.hallogram.com/visualuml/ .
Web site : See ....
Capabilities : .... GDPro is a visual modeling tool that brings time-saving utility to all phases of the software development process. From code, GDPro can reverse engineer your software system, automatically producing UML models that give you insight into what you currently have, mapping relationships, objects, methods and properties. It allows application developers to create and communicate across the enterprise using simple, comprehensive visual blueprints of Java, C++ and IDL.
Or, GDPro can be used to design a system starting from scratch, then automatically generate code from the new UML-based models. At every point in this process the development team can use GDPro to navigate through the code, and communicate throughout the enterprise, maintaining a coordinated, efficient development process.
Specific capabilities include:
Web site : See http://www.advancedsw.com/overview.html .
PUBLIC DOMAIN VISUAL MODELING TOOLS
Capabilities : .... Dia 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 simple circuits. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.
It can load and save diagrams to a custom XML format (gzipped by default, to save space), can export diagrams to EPS or SVG formats and can print diagrams (including ones that span multiple pages).
Benefits : .... Don't have to buy Visio....
Limitations : .... Diagrams only defined at the object level. No support for consistency checking among diagrams..
Web site : See http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/ .
ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES
The main purpose of XMI is to enable easy interchange of metadata between modeling tools (based on the OMG UML) and between tools and metadata repositories (OMG MOF based) in distributed heterogeneous environments. XMI integrates three key industry standards:
The integration of these three standards into XMI marries the best of OMG and W3C metadata and modeling technologies allowing developers of distributed systems share object models and other meta data over the Internet. XMI, together with MOF and UML form the core of the OMG repository architecture that integrates object oriented modeling and design tools between each other and with a MOF based extensible repository framework.
If you've been following the industry's efforts to enhance the exchange of information on the web, then you're probably already familiar with the Extensible Markup Language (XML). XML is an open standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) designed as a data format for structured document interchange on the web. It extends your tagging options by allowing you to define your own metadata when HTML is not a good fit.
Now, IBM, Unisys, and other industry leaders have created a new open industry standard that combines the benefits of the web-based XML standard for defining, validating, and sharing document formats on the web with the benefits of the object-oriented Unified Modeling Language (UML), a specification of the Object Management Group (OMG) that provides application developers a common language for specifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting distributed objects and business models.
The XML Metadata Interchange Format (XMI) specifies an open information interchange model that is intended to give developers working with object technology the ability to exchange programming data over the Internet in a standardized way, thus bringing consistency and compatibility to applications created in collaborative environments. By establishing an industry standard for storing and sharing object programming information, development teams using various tools from multiple vendors can still collaborate on applications. The proposed standard will allow developers to leverage the web to exchange data between tools, applications, and repositories to create secure, distributed applications built in a team development environment.
Objectives of XMI. The objectives of XMI are to allow the exchange of objects and software assets throughout your application development environments from the OMG's Object Analysis and Design Facility. These objects are more commonly described as UML (Unified Modeling Language) and MOF (Meta Objects Facility). XMI is the new industry standard way of doing this, which avoids creating a variety of proprietary formats, each specific to a vendor tool. Also, XMI is intended to be a "stream" format. That is, it can either be stored in a traditional file system or streamed across the Internet from a database or repository.
Current status of XMI. XMI was adopted as a recommended technology by the OMG on March 23, 1999. The XMI proposal was outlined at the June 98 OMG technical committee meeting in Orlando, where XMI was identified as the cornerstone of open information model interchange. The revised submission was made available on schedule and presented to the OMG in November 1998 in Burlingame, California. The presentation was was followed by a live cross-vendor demonstration of prototype XMI enablement in key IBM products. On the September 17th CWM, the upcoming Common Warehouse Metadata interchange standard for database schemas and data warehousing, was submitted to the OMG by IBM, Unisys, Oracle, Genesis, Hyperion, NCR, Dimension EDI, and UBS, and endorsed by Deere and Sun. Please refer to http://cgi.omg.org/techprocess/meetings/schedule/CWMI_RFP.html .
CWM provides a standard mechanism for describing relational and record-oriented database schemas, warehouse deployment, operation and processes, data transformations, XML data sources, multidimensional data, and OLAP. Users interchange CWM information with the included XMI-generated XML DTD or by the interface APIs.
XMI Framework. The XMI Framework is a simple Java API for saving and loading XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) files and creating XMI DTDs. Its purpose is to help you learn XMI. It supports XMI version 1.0 and version 1.1. You can use the framework object model to represent your data and models, or you can use your own classes. You can also generate Java code from framework models and UML XMI files. You can use any XML parser that supports the JAXP 1.0 interface.
For more information, please see http://alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/xmiframework
XMI Toolkit. The XMI Toolkit 1.15 is a refresh of the XMI Toolkit 1.05 technology. The Toolkit is a Java component that converts UML information between Rational Rose Models and XMI-standard XML files. The Toolkit can also generate DTDs directly from your models. A Reference Implementation of XMI, with source code, is included. The functionality includes the ability to generate Java from Rational Rose and UML models and to convert Java to Rational Rose and UML models. This refresh includes an updated framework API that allows you to read and write XMI 1.1 files. Additionally, a sample application using adapters to serialize and deserialize Java objects using XMI is provided.
For more information on XMI, please see http://www.software.ibm.com/ad/features/xmi.html
References and Web Resources |
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Developed in February 2001 by Mark Austin
Copyright © 2001, Mark Austin, University of Maryland