No Magic has announced the release of MagicDraw UML 11.0. MagicDraw 11.0 extends its integration with Eclipse IDE adding capability to model and code in the single environment.

Additionally, the new version adds localization of MagicDraw Graphical User Interface in Russian to already existing support in nine languages.

MagicDraw UML is now available for purchase in six editions and under three license types starting from Personal Edition ($149). Standard Edition begins from $499, Professional from $899, Enterprise from $1,599.
Teamwork Solution. Along with single licenses, Teamwork Server, the team collaboration solution available in three editions: 2-5 Connections ($1,495) 6-10 Connections ($2,995) and 10+ Connections ($5,995). Educational and government discounts are available.

Software Assurance Contracts allow customers to receive the new releases with prices starting at $39* (Personal), $99* (Standard), $199* (Professional), $319* (Enterprise), $255* (Teamwork Server). (* If bought with the original purchase.)

A Free Community Edition and free Academic Personal Site License are available.

Can anybody compare MagicDraw with
Omondo,Together or IBM's monster from WSAD?

PS Does anynody knows good UML tool for NetBeans?


--Mark

From my experience with MagicDraw (4 years) it has the features of Rational without the steep learning curve. I've given MagicDraw to Jr. developers and they've been able to pick the tool up and model the system. I can't do the same thing with Rational. People usually need some formal training to use Rational. I've used Omondo, but usually end up getting frustrated with its lack of features.

I don't think a comparison to Rational Rose (haven't seen what IBM has done to it since the acquisition) tells us much; Rose is one of the worst modelling tools I have used in both the feature set and usability. On the other hand I don't remember it having a steep learning curve (it's been a few years since I met Rose for the first time).

From my experience with MagicDraw (4 years) it has the features of Rational without the steep learning curve. I've given MagicDraw to Jr. developers and they've been able to pick the tool up and model the system. I can't do the same thing with Rational. People usually need some formal training to use Rational. I've used Omondo, but usually end up getting frustrated with its lack of features.

I don't think a comparison to Rational Rose (haven't seen what IBM has done to it since the acquisition) tells us much; Rose is one of the worst modelling tools I have used in both the feature set and usability

Thank you! I've been saying this for years but I see Rose being listed as the 'premier' UML tool very often. It does seem that often those recommending it have never actually used it. I suppose that's a testament to the power of marketing.

PS Does anynody knows good UML tool for NetBeans?--Mark

Have you looked at the NetBeans 5.5 beta that was announced recently on their site? That included some UML functionality. (I haven't tried it myself, but I did read some blog postings about automatic code synchronisation with class diagrams etc.)

Anyone know if you can you generate AndroMDA apps using the free edition of this tool?

At least on older versions, I'm absolutely positive you can. I've been using Magic Draw for just that purpose for years. And I agree with others that it's the best combination of ease of use and features that I've seen. The only thing I've seen that was close in the same price range was Poseidon, but I dropped that a long time ago after using MagicDraw; it's just not as mature.

With the 10.0 release of MagicDraw, however, I ran into problems with AndroMDA. Mostly I believe this is because they upgraded the UML support to UML 2.0 and I think it made AndroMDA barf. I'm using older versions of AndroMDA because I have a TON of generation cartridges that I haven't had the time to upgrade. Last I heard from MagicDraw support, they were working on the problems with AndroMDA, so at least they're aware of it. I just haven't had the time to screw around with newer versions of AndroMDA or MagicDraw, since I already have something that works and that I'm pretty dependent on.

Just as a clarification, the free version also works for the AndroMDA generation I do. Again, that's with the caveat that it's an older version of MagicDraw and AndroMDA. I'm assuming that if the newer versions don't work together, they will at some point.

Sure you can.
We have just used MagicDraw Community Edition 9.5 and AndroMDA 3.1 to generate the complete DAO stack (java objects, database generation, hibernate mapping, Spring integration) of a meta-tool. The community Edition allows for creating as many classes and class daigrams as you want and it was enough for our needs.

The only limitations we have found with the analysis of the MagicDraw XMI by AndroMDA were the following :
* the association classes (we had to use a pattern to break this relationship between to associations) that were not managed by androMDA.
* the realisation of interfaces not managed completely by the AndroMDA hibernate cartridge. Perhaps it has been fixed now.

Enjoy with MagicDraw and AndroMDA ;-)

Can anybody compare MagicDraw with Omondo,Together or IBM's monster from WSAD?PS Does anynody knows good UML tool for NetBeans?--Mark

I've used MagicDraw extensively (I own a license for the Java professional mobile edition!), Rose extensively, Together a bit, XDE quite a bit, Enterprise architect a bit, Omondo a bit, Poseidon a bit etc etc. You get the idea.

Basically, MagicDraw is a good UML tool. It is very good for creating diagrams and has UML2 support. It also has a decent plugin API, which I used for my work. It's decent at reverse engineering, but roundtripping is not so good. I end up getting duplicate classes etc. The tool is a lot easier to use than rose, but I don't really like the team server approach. It's a lot cheaper than rose, although the price has been steadily increasing over the years. I stopped "software assurance" after I felt they were starting to gouge me on this.

Rose used to be very good (around '97 or so) but has got steadily more bloated and buggy since. Don't do sequence diagrams in Rose. The demise of rose has left a huge hole in the modelling tools area as nothing of substantial weight from a large company has moved in to replace it. I've used XDE (ok, but cumbersome and it ties you into an old version of eclipse) which has good rev engineering facilities but is not without its faults. I tried Rational Software Architect before giving up in disgust. The download alone was over a gb! In the preliminary time I tried it, I found it cumbersome and bloated.

Together is excellent, but it tends to tie you very closely to the code. The roundtripping and fwd & reverse engineering were first class in the version I used. It was very expensive however. It's not a bad choice if you have the money (about US5k).

Enterprise Architect is a superb tool for the price. It costs something like US$130, and is a good drawing tool. The fwd engineering to java is simplistic, but you have code templates which can be edited. The reverse engineering is simplistic also. Good team possibilities. The bottom line is this is excellent if you can make it work for you, but may be too lightweight if you want code generation etc.

I don't know of a good tool for netbeans. Poseidon used to support it, but stopped due to lack of demand I believe. I think compuware offer a freebie modeler which is a taster for OptimalJ. I don't know the link, and I don't know if it is still current.

Another great tool, which is free is staruml: www.staruml.com
This has possibilities for MDA due to the templating and scripting (in JScript) but is pretty lightweight for this side. Still, it's excellent if you just want drawing and reports.

I've used Omondo a bit, but always found it lacking. I gave up retrying it about 2 years ago, so it may have moved on from then. It felt very much like a simpler version of Together, offering fairly seamless code to model integration.

So, in summary:

Rose --> the old gorilla in the space. decent code tools, but far too buggy now. Avoid sequence diagrams. Handles team support by splitting into files which can be version controlled.

MagicDraw --> excellent tool for diagrams, slightly buggy code generation & reversing. Relatively cheap.

Enterprise Architect --> superb and cheap, but very lightweight on coding.

Rational Software Architect --> I'll only know after I upgrade my machine to 2gb!

Together --> excellent code facilities, but very pricey.

Cheers,
Andrew

Mark,
please write to support at magicdraw dot com and we'll send you the comparisons with Omondo and Together.

Can anybody compare MagicDraw with Omondo,Together or IBM's monster from WSAD?PS Does anynody knows good UML tool for NetBeans?--Mark

I've used Rational and TogetherCenter not MagicDraw. The price is too steep for me. I use Enterprise Architect which I've found to be better (architecture, design, development) than the ones I've tried and its dirt cheap - under $200. I recommend it highly. You can find it at:
www.sparxsystems.com There is a free trial download.
No, I don't work for them. I work for one of the U.S.'s largest system integrators and I've convinced them to use it here.

Enterprise Architect is a much better tool indeed. One thing I don't like about it (this may have changed since I used it last time - it seems like I use a different modelling tool on every project): it doesn't let you easily create simple diagrams without creating all the classes for it. I often want to create a picture for a word document, without going into too many details. I think they assume that you will end up generating code from the model, and this is rarely true in my expirience.

Cheers
P.

I've used Rational and TogetherCenter not MagicDraw. The price is too steep for me. I use Enterprise Architect which I've found to be better (architecture, design, development) than the ones I've tried and its dirt cheap - under $200. I recommend it highly. You can find it at:www.sparxsystems.com There is a free trial download. No, I don't work for them. I work for one of the U.S.'s largest system integrators and I've convinced them to use it here.

I've used Rational Rose, Together J, and MagicDraw (upt ot version 6.0) for past 10 years in OO Design.

MagicDraw is both cheaper and easier to use than Rational Rose almost in most cases. It has a team server to support check-in/out on per class/diagram basis, good in theory to facilitate large team sharig the artifects - but in my past experience we often left with locks that should have been released.

One thing I liked about Rose was that they can split the big model into multiple files. and different role (Analyst/PM, Architect/Designer, Developer, QA) can pick a subset of the files to form a view relevant to the role, also you could implement (with Rational consultants) some tracking across the files to make sure, say one use case is addressed by some design and implmented by some particular artifects (classes, etc). I've mentioned this feature to MagicDraw team a few years back, I hope they have come out with some solution.

TogetherJ has best sequence diagram facility among the three from my experience. It has never end up in broken sequence diagram when I move a invocation line up or down (i.e. change the sequence of call, etc). Rose used to fail easily on this, MagicDraw sometimes is goofed up too. Together J also can generate sequence diagram from the code - but often with too much detail then you want to show/see for any nontrivil solution, although you have some choice not to show some objects in the diagram. Placing a object into sequence diagram is not as easy as Rose/MagicDraw though. I guess TogetherJ prime themselve on round-trip engineering, with Java code and UML in sync. I have not practice side much. I did not have too much exciting experience with Rose/magicDraw about forward code generation. Most of time, I use UML tools to start with design on hi/medium level package/class structural diagrams and collaboration/sequence diagrams only.

Cheers
Chuck

Current MagicDraw version already supports decomposition of large models into several files (modules), but with some restrictions (elements from module cannot depend on main project elements). MagicDraw 11.5 coming in summer will remove these restrictions and also will add a lot of usability in decomposition:

a) MagicDraw will not require loading modules into memory opening new project. User will be able to load modules on demand. This will decrease memory footprint and increase MagicDraw performance with large models.

b) Modules will not be read only – refactoring will become very easy.

c) User will be able to mount module not only into main project root, but to any package.
 

AndroMDA cannot read UML 2.0 model saved into OMG XMI 2.1 (this format is used by MagicDraw 1x.x). AndroMDA now is working on Eclipse EMF import. MagicDraw 11.5 will have export to Eclipse EMF capability. Because of that integration between AndroMDA and MagicDraw 11.5 should be functional again. At the current moment we provide MagicDraw 9.x version for those who want to use AndroMDA.

Regarding UML tool for NetBeans. MagicDraw integrates seamlessly with NetBeans 5.0. Additionaly, you can integrate with IBM RAD, Borland JBuilder, IntelliJ IDEA, Sun Java Studio, with MDA tools - Compuware OptimalJ, IO Software ArcStyler, openArchitectureWare and other tools.

your actrix email bounced. not sure if you'll get this and hope this is the correct Chuck Zheng! I worked with you in NZ. I am back in London now. trust you are well, it'd be great to catch up best regards James Langdale-Brown James.Brown2@dkib.com

It works on OS X, which, as a loyal Eclipse/MyEclipseIDE user, is something I can't take for granted these days.