TogetherSoft early on was noted for its detailed UML-code integration - providing simulanteous round-trip engineering. This latest verions of Together Control Center now covers a far broader territory including J2EE, and Web services.

J2EE integration includes EJB 2.0 but it doesn't stop there. In addition, TCC 5.5 integrates JBoss 2.0, ATG Dynamo, provides support for JSPs, SOAP, XML (XSD and DTD). And they've added tool and testing integration plus have extended their entity relation support into Oracle 9i.

For complete information feature list see:
http://www.javaskyline.com/20010921_together.html.

Check out Together Control Center.

Download Together CTC 5.5 Eval.

Regards,

Rich Katz

Nice tool. If they only could lower the price by say 80%,
software development companies could actually afford it.
Or is it just developers in Germany who have to fork out
the equivalent of a middle-class car for a single node-
locked license, even in a major IT recession?

If the pricing were reasonable, we'd equip a whole
company with this software, even the trainee's computers.
But with the current pricing, you download it, look at it,
throw it away and continue with JBuilder/Netbeans/Xemacs.

Regards,
    Henrik

I have to agree with you. I needed a UML tool for a class I was taking (Visio doesn't hack it), and downloaded a bunch, including the "Community" version of Together. It's so limited that I never even bothered to install it.

As part of their sales follow-up, I received two emails from two guys at Together. I explained why I wasn't using it and made suggestions for a "Together Lite" with a price under $100. I never heard from them again.

ARt

As an independent software developer, I can't possibly afford Together products, so I have found another one that lets me do what I need to - much more reasonably priced (though not less than $100)...it's the Magic Draw product - give it a try at www.magicdraw.com (despite its somewhat cheesy name, it does quite a bit!)

Cheers
Ray

I agree completely. We were using Together on a limited basis within our architecture group and decided to deploy a UML tool to the rest of our development group. But after seeing the price increases that TogetherSoft has been pushing (can you believe how much a ControlCenter license costs for a floating license??) we decided to look for alternatives. We ended up with NoMagic's MagicDraw. I still have some issues with its Collaboration Diagrams but otherwise I think it's a great product. And its priced very very aggresively.

It may not have all of the deployment tools and everything that Together has but let's all be realistic, how many of you have actually *used* all those fancy features on a regular basis? I know I hand roll my ejb jars and run and invoke everything from the command line. I just want a competant modeling tool with some reverse engineering capabilities. That it's. The metrics and other things were okay but we definitely don't need them on *every* desktop.

As for their editor, it's okay but I really like my IDEA/MagicDraw combination over their integrated solution. Plus, I want an option to just do *modeling* rather than it always generating/modifying code.

I do like Together's product, though, even though it may seem otherwise from my rant here but I can't justify the price they're charging compared to what other tools on the market are charging. Together, I think you need to review how valuable your tools really are to the development industry and how they really use them. How about a modeling version that doesn't have all of this deployment stuff in it?

-Mike

I completely agree with u.

I'm a huge Peter Coad fan. And it's a shame Together has gotten so expensive, in particular since Together Whiteboard was discontinued.

However, I would urge you too look at Posiedon from Gentleware. Posiedon is an extenion of the open-source ArgoUML tool. It's a bit slower and clunkier than Together, but it's getting better & they're working on integrating it with Netbeans/Forte so you get almost all of the functionality of Together.

Mark

Take EJB 2.0 support with a pinch of salt.
It supports Message driven beans but does NOT support local interfaces or container managed relationships.
It also does not support WebLogic 6.1.
There is no GUI builder.

Other than this, it's a great tool although I would agree with all the points about expense but bear in mind that it does have features over and above run of the mill IDEs including all the UML stuff, reverse engineering etc

I have just installed the trial of TogetherSoft ControlCenter.
WebLogic 6.1 is supported.

I've downloaded their eval version and it's as cool as everybody says. However, since I don't particularly like to talk to a pushy sales person, could anyone give me a ballpark figure of the cost of node locked/floating license?

To summarise; Together is available in two different varieties
Together Solo - no j2ee support, limited set of design patterns
Together ControlCentre - full support for j2ee (Apps Servers such as Bea etc) full set of Suns design patterns
In addition to Java, Together supports VB, Corba, C# & C++
Cost: - Together comes either as a per seat licence or as a floating licence. Floating licence costs 1.6 times per seat licence
Together Solo per seat €4900
Together ControlCentre per seat €8300
These costs include premium support for the first 12 months which allows free upgrades/patches and hotline support
After 12 months, this support costs 20% of total licence cost per yr

We have tried to evaluate Together in the past, but couldnt evaluate it fully. We were pretty exasperated with their evaluation cycle and systems; a 15 day evaluation time, where they take 2 days to just deliver the license keys, is not on. Do they seriously believe they can hurry people into buying?
Ravi