UMLDesigner - History, Experiences, Drawbacks, Pitfalls

[marten]

This goodie is one of the goodies I often have a look at - and I always ask myself how do I have to look at it: is it a bad tool ? a good tool ? too complicated ? Nice idea, but bad implemented ?

It offers lots of possibilities, but it is not so easy to use. Actually its not a tool, where you sit down and after 10 minutes you get a happy feeling.

Therefore I would like to know more about the history of this tool. Has anyone real experience with this tool ? What was bad ? What was good ? What were the user expecting - what could the tool not deliver ?

I've just changed the G600 version distribution to load without problems into a 7.5 VA image base. It can be downloaded from here:

http://www.schrievkrom.de/extfiles/umldesigner-va750.zip

Any ideas or comments - please !

Marten

[marten]

Ok, there seems to be no more users out there ...

I contacted one author of one of the RedBooks about that tool and (as far as he could remember) the tool was pretty well those days - some stuff was missing, but after all it worked.

In my view using the tool seems still to be possible - perhaps the documentation about the code generator is missing and one has to find out, how to add an additional code generator.

Perhaps it would be better to extract the code generator and put it into an additional tool to generate its own source code (as the object extender did).

Another interesting thing is, that all in UMLDesigner is about interfaces (or protocols) ... and this is missing in Smalltalk (all versions).

Marten

[marten]

I've changed the archive for 7.5.1:

http://www.schrievkrom.de/extfiles/umldesigner-va751.zip

The archive now contains both versions and additional documentation from IBM for this goodie (a RedBook).

Marten

[marten]

Version for 7.5.2:

http://www.schrievkrom.de/extfiles/umldesigner-va752.zip

[marten]

Version for 8.0 Beta1:

http://www.schrievkrom.de/extfiles/umldesigner-va800-02.zip

[rjs]

Version for 8.0 Beta1: http://www.schrievkrom.de/extfiles/umldesigner-va800-02.zip
etc.

Man, you are industrious! I do mean that as a compliment.

I looked at this tool a year or two ago. It seems to me it had a couple of drawbacks.
1) It was hard to get into (hard compared to the effort I was willing to expend, not necessarily absolutely hard - if you know what I mean).
2) It was based on UML 1.1 or something like that. These days, UML is up to v2.2 or something like that. And there are huge differences between the two versions.

Additionally, I found the idea intriguing, but there are so many really good UML tools out there now (System Architect and MagicDraw come to mind), that a limited implementation inside Smalltalk just isn't worth it (to me). [In fact, I have been working on a MagicDraw plug-in to support Smalltalk round-trip engineering. It's a long way from ready, so don't ask. <s>]

[marten]

UMLDesigner is one of these unloved children (ObjectExtender seems to be the other one) - nobody really cares about .

I used RationalRose (some years ago) and there the main work is done by drawing of diagrams: first are the diagrams, then comes the rest. And this is what the general users expect. You draw a diagram, then create the source code and then: ready. Very fast. Even in the .NET world this is the expectation.

UMLDesigner is completely different and this makes the life harder for the user. In the world of the UMLDesigner the specifications come first and then - for documentation purposes only - come the diagrams. The tools is based on the idea to describe the solution in detail via text (and later in addition in diagrams - and connect them via links) and this tools leads you towards the specification of classes and interfaces. What a pity, that interfaces are not available in Smalltalk and VASmalltalk - the tool guides you to interfaces - a thing, that the main target language (Smalltalk) actually does not support.

UMLDesigner is not a tool for fast turnaround programming. The GUI shows its ages - as the Report feature's GUI.

But after all drawbacks: it's the best what we have now and it is integrated within VASmalltalk (and ENVY/QA), which is a big plus. I do not need UML (I know, larger companies do need that - or they think, that they have to need that), but I would like to see a specification tool, with a much better code generator - perhaps even for other languages.

I wrote my own specification tool for our C# project (in Smalltalk) and it was designed (though without diagrams) to build classes pretty fast. The longer we are developing our C# system I would like to have UMLDesigner to write down more textual specifications for our model and a more interface oriented design.

I'm still thinking to put some work on this tool to make it more suitable for me:

* extract the code generation out of this tool into an own tool with language specific extensions (Smalltalk and C# and perhaps relational database support)
* extend the reporting services by integrating my OpenOffice wrapper into the ENVY/QA documentation suite.
* extend the format of the first comment of a compiled method to define actions, parameter specification, return values and perhaps exception - as the programmer did with some success in the SST framework.

With these ideas the UMLDesigner might be a good start ...

[wembley]

Version for 8.0 Beta1:

http://www.schrievkrom.de/extfiles/umldesigner-va800-02.zip

The VA Smalltalk V8 manager will have a small set of goodies included in it. The UML Designer goodie is the first one we've released to the V8 build. Our commitment on goodies that we ship is to ensure they load in the current release (which means we will keep required map links, etc. up-to-date) and don't have any obvious failures. Beyond that, they are still goodies and will receive minimal attention from the development staff. If someone finds and fixes a problem with a goodie, please post the updated goodie to the VAStGoodies.com site. We will monitor the site for updates and integrate the ones affecting goodies shipped in the VA Smalltalk manager.

[jtuchel]

John,

that's good news. I remember having read a redbook about how to use the UML Designer. It opened my eyes to the concepts and ideas and the power behind the tool. It's still available at IBM: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.ns ... enDocument
Do you see any chance of making this available for your users? Just in case someone at IBM decides to cut old wires...

Even though the user interface is not really up-to-date, the UML Designer is a gerat tool. I wouldn't worry too much about newer diagram types or other things that are part of the newer UML specifications, because part of that stuff is not really helpful in designing sotware or reengineering exitsing code. You always have to decide whether you use UML as a tool or as a work of pure art

cu

Joachim

[marten]

Joachim,

I've added this document to my changed zip-files already ... simply for the case you mentioned.

Marten

John,

that's good news. I remember having read a redbook about how to use the UML Designer. It opened my eyes to the concepts and ideas and the power behind the tool. It's still available at IBM: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.ns ... enDocument
Do you see any chance of making this available for your users? Just in case someone at IBM decides to cut old wires...

Even though the user interface is not really up-to-date, the UML Designer is a gerat tool. I wouldn't worry too much about newer diagram types or other things that are part of the newer UML specifications, because part of that stuff is not really helpful in designing sotware or reengineering exitsing code. You always have to decide whether you use UML as a tool or as a work of pure art

cu

Joachim

[wembley]

I remember having read a redbook about how to use the UML Designer. It opened my eyes to the concepts and ideas and the power behind the tool. It's still available at IBM: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.ns ... enDocument
Do you see any chance of making this available for your users? Just in case someone at IBM decides to cut old wires...

Yes, it is included in the latest V8 build.