DESIGN AND ANALYSIS TOOLS
Together WebSphere Studio Edition
Borland (formerly TogetherSoft)
 Bill Pataky, Director of Product Management and Marketing; David Intersimone, VP of Developer Relations and Chief Evangelist; Arnaud Weber, Director of Research and Development |
If you’re already working with IBM’s WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD), Borland’s Together WebSphere Studio Edition 6.0 should whet your appetite. The software extends the IBM WebSphere Studio (WSS) enterprise development environment by taking the model-build-deploy cycle and adding a plug-in to provide the modeling capability. Developers familiar with the WebSphere look and feel should have no problem picking up this product. Using model-driven development, Together WebSphere Studio integrates into WebSphere, pumping it up with drag-and-drop UML modeling, real-time code synchronization, existing and customized pattern support and automatic documentation generation, as well as audit data and metrics.
The real-time code synchronization allows for model changes to be reflected
immediately in your code base—and vice versa. The audit and metric data
lets you track your code quality during development. You can generate HTML reports
to describe cohesion, complexity and coupling in the source code. The auto documentation
features can be used to customize HTML-generated docs based on your current
UML model information in the familiar JavaDoc format. Together WebSphere Studio
requires an additional 55MB of space on the various platforms supported by WSAD.
— Sue Spielman
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Argo/UML
Developers looking for an open-source tool to develop systems in Java
using UML will find that Argo/UML meets many, if not all, of their needs.
A pure Java CASE tool, Argo/UML focuses on helping developers with cognitive
aspects of design; support for code generation and reverse engineering
is less mature. It also offers a full-featured state chart editor, including
concurrency modeling. The project uses open XML file formats XMI and PGML;
with the source code freely available, enterprising developers can modify
Argo/UML to meet their needs. Organizations needing support should look
at Poseidon, a commercial implementation of Argo/UML (www.gentleware.com). —Warren Keuffel |
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Codagen Architect
In the never-ending quest to automate, Codagen Architect 3.0 steps up
to the plate. This development process tool integrates with your favorite
UML modeling tool, including Rational Rose, Together ControlCenter and
Visio 2002 UML—a list that should cover most serious architects’
needs. Using a model-driven architecture approach, Codagen generates up
to 100 percent of your application’s architecture source code and
typically 70–90 percent of the total application code that can fit
into either a J2EE or .NET framework, or both, the remainder (usually
the business logic) to be created by the developer. Language support includes
Microsoft Visual Basic, C#, C++ and Java. What makes this product stand
out? It generates only pure source without any reference to a Codagen
module, component or framework. —Sue Spielman |
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SmartDraw
SmartDraw is like discovering a gold mine and finding out it’s
easy to get at the gold. This multiple award–winning product bows
to your command: Want to draw a map? Simple. How about drawing a house
plan with doors and windows? No problem. A UML diagram, organizational
and flow charts, timelines, calendars, engineering and software designs?
All easy to do, at various levels of detail, with expert results. SmartDraw’s
secret? Symbol libraries—plenty of them, with more available on
the SmartDraw website, offering free and full integration with MS Office
for design and export. Along the way, SmartDraw makes drawing easier,
yet more powerful. I’ve already made the switch. —Rosalyn Lum |