Visual Paradigm International are pleased to announce the release of Visual Paradigm for UML (VP-UML) 5.1. New in VP-UML 5.1:

User-defined UML Notation Rendering - display user-defined image by replacing the standard UML symbols, such as a computer symbol for a subsystem actor. A rich collection set of clipart is bundled for creating your corporate look and feel diagram.

ORM Diagram - Visualize the relationships between Object & Relational model and auto-synchronized whenever the model had been changed in either side.

Package Diagram, Object Diagram - New UML 2.0 compliant Package Diagram and Object Diagram.

Robustness Analysis Notation support - Display shapes as robustness analysis icons (Boundary/Control/Entity) in Sequence Diagram and Communication Diagram. The best feature for modeling the Model-View-Control (MVC) design pattern.

Traceability of Use Cases and Their Realizations - Generate system level Sequence Diagram from Flow of Events, or synchronize Sequence Diagram. Again, models will be synchronized, if changes had been made in either side of the model.

Link to File - Quick access of related documents or other resources within a diagram by taking advantages of link file shapes.


To download a free Community Edition, please visit:
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/vpuml/productinfovpumlce.jsp

To evaluate a commercial edition (USD 99 - 1399), please visit:
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/vpuml/

Does not support 1.5 syntax either.

-Pete

Does not support 1.5 syntax either.-Pete

If you need 1.5 syntax support, Borland Together Architect/Developer has support for it and for Eclipse 3.1.

Just a wee bit expensive for me.

No hope for MDA

So many vendors are trying to build Modelling tools on the incomplete, unpractical and unspecific week OMG “Standards” like UML,MOF and XMI.

Good Modelling tools should allow me to design and specify program as precise as possible to generate good structured documentation for the developers (quick read and knowing what to do) and to generate (MDA) as much as possible.

The problem is that the usage of UML for example is to less specify in detail and to flexible (in good and bad). Every Tool-Vendor tries to fix its holes with their own incompatible extinctions.

All UML-Modelling tools suffer under:

- Useless XMI import/export: there is no tool that really implements any XMI-Standard !
- Bad user interfaces ! Want to create/edit Attributes ? Don’t break your fingers !
- To Diagram-Centric: You could do UML without Diagram’s ! Why is it so hard to create parts of the Model in normal dialogs (add/edit quick some Attributes) and add Diagrams later for Visualization?
- Models Stored in Files: This is a good and bad.
Good: Versioning, but it versioning the complete Model really good ?
Bad: Ever tried to work with an XMI-file of a big well-modelled Project (300 Classes)
Some Projects have more one person that is working on the Model at the same time (happy merging)
- Stop trying to build the 1001st Rose-clone !

There is no hope that OMG will ever be able to fix the flaws and holes in UML/MOF/XMI.
If you don’t believe me take a look at their specification(pdf) documents which are good “bad documentation” examples. Take a look at OMG’s UML-Diagrams or mdl-file as example and think of the words “a uml model as a complete specification”.

UML/MOF/XMI is good for drawing some boxes and lines but not for real MDA.

Greetings by a still hoping MDA fan
(With bad English)