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Tool Support
With Windows UML modeling tool prices running upwards of $3,000 per user (with an additional $1,000 to $2,000 surcharge on the UNIX platform), it's arguably true that the high cost of quality modeling tools has kept the majority of developers from adopting object-oriented analysis and design techniques—which should already have been state of the practice five or six years ago, if not more. But driven by open-source modeling tool efforts such as Thorn and ArgoUML, this state of affairs is about to change. Thorn is a UML modeling tool written in Java that allows you to use XML to save the models you create. The purpose of the Thorn modeling tool is to help develop and manage increasingly sophisticated open source development efforts.
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Figure 1 | Use-case diagram built as part of the open-source Enroll.argo project tutorial.
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ArgoUML is a modular and extensible open-source Java/UML project from Tigris.org, a mid-sized open-source community that focuses on building better tools for collaborative software development. Based on the UML 1.3 specification and licensed similar to the Apache web server, ArgoUML provides comprehensive support for XMI, the XML Model Interchange format, and OCL (the Object Constraint Language). Developed by Jos Warmer as a language for business modeling within IBM, OCL is a subset of UML that allows software developers to create highly specific sets of rules that govern aspects of an individual object. Since many software projects these days require unique and complex rules written specifically for business models, the ability to write constraints over object models using OCL is particularly useful.
Several UML tool vendors are now climbing on the collaboration tool bandwagon, including market leader Rational, with its Rational Suite set of software development lifecycle tools that integrates the Rational Rose platform with its ClearCase change management solution and a raft of other requirements (RequisitePro), testing (QualityArchitect, Purify, Quantify and TestManager), and verification (PureCoverage) tools. Advanced Software's GDPro product, which was recently acquired by Embarcadero Technologies (who make the ER/Studio data-modeling tool), is banking on collaborating with Java IDE users, including the 1 million-plus people who have downloaded Sun's open-source Forte for Java tool.
Demonstrating an upcoming renamed GDPro release called Describe that can be accessed from a tab on the Forte IDE menu bar, Greg Schottland (former CEO and founder of
Advanced and current General Manager of Embarcadero's Application Development Tools division) boasted that "this is the end of reverse engineering and round-tripping as we know it … Now a UML diagram will be just another view into a Java project. When you change the source, it changes the diagram, and vice versa."
Cittera from newcomer CanyonBlue, Inc. is a pure-play UML collaboration tool that allows developers in various locations to work on modeling projects in real time, using an Internet-based virtual whiteboard environment. (To get more background on these and other UML tools, check the Objects by Design site, which focuses on recent developments in object-oriented design and programming.)
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Introduction
Introduction 
What's Next for the UML? 
