Uml Tools
Program-Transformation.Org: The Program Transformation Wiki
There are many tools for editing UML diagrams. I conducted a little comparison to find a good tool to use in a software engineering course in the Spring of 2000. This page lists requirements for good UML tools and reviews a number of existing tools. Since I put the page up I have had some requests from tool vendors to add a link to their tool. I have moved the page to the program-transformation.org wiki such that anyone can add to this page. Feel free to add more links and reviews by selecting the Edit link in the sidebar.
-- EelcoVisser - 19 Nov 2001
Requirements for UML Tools
Functionality
- Diagram composition
- Completeness: How much of UML is supported?
- Can diagrams be layed out automatically? What is the quality of the automatic layout?
- Code generation
- Is it possible to generate code from diagrams?
- Which languages are covered?
- Reverse engineering
- Is it possible to generate diagrams from existing code?
- Which languages are covered? To what extent?
- Round-trip engineering
- Is it possible to keep diagrams and code in sync?
Constraints
- Availability
- Price
- Student/academic edition
- Performance
- Is drawing and manipulating diagrams realtime?
- Open
- Can the tool be combined with other tools?
- Open source
- Is it possible to improve and extend the tool?
Existing Tools
There are numerous tools for creating and manipulating UML diagrams. I have looked at a few of them
- Rational Rose
- http://www.rational.com
- developed by the designers of UML
- not on Linux
- expensive license
- Object Domain
- http://www.objectdomain.com
- implemented in Java (portable)
- supports round-trip engineering
- supports HTML documentation generation
- affordable academic license ($95)
- ArgoUML?
- http://argouml.tigris.org
- open source (free)
- implemented in Java
- fast
- supports Java generation, but not reverse engineering
- TogetherSoft?
- http://www.togethersoft.com
- expensive full edition, free whiteboard edition (only supports class diagrams)
- implemented in Java
- supports instaneous synchronisation between model and code
- Visual Paradigm for UML
- http://www.visual-paradigm.com/vpuml.php
- free community edition for non-commercial
- well-tested on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, UNIX
The reviews above were conducted in the Spring of 2000 and might be out of date.
There are a number of other tools that I haven't had time for to look at:
- Artisan
- GDPro from Advanced Software Technologies Inc.
- Object Techology Workbench
- MinUML
CategorySystem | Contributions by EelcoVisser