Will the UML ever become truly universal?
- From: "Nameless" <news.mail@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 12:17:05 +0200
A broad description of UML may be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Language
The following passage is relevant to this message:
Models vs. diagrams
It is important to distinguish between a UML model, and
a UML diagram, or set of diagrams, including Use Case
Diagram, Collaboration Diagram, Activity Diagram,
Sequence Diagram, Deployment Diagram, Component Diagram,
Class Diagram, StateChart Diagram--a UML diagram is a
graphical representation of the information in the
model, but the model exists independently. XMI in its
current version provides interchange for any OMG models.
Diagrams can also be represented as models using the
Diagram Interchange (DI, XMI[DI]) standard, but since
it is relatively new very few tools support it.
A broad description of XMI may be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMI
but to cut to the chase it is the third paragraph which is
the most striking in respect to this message:
Several versions of XMI have been created: 1.0, 1.1,
1.2 and 2.0. The 2.0 version is radically different
from the 1.x series. However it brings XMI closer to
idiomatic XML usage, but is unfortunately very rarely
supported by modeling tools. The lack of good XMI
support is slightly incomprehensible, since it is not a
particularly complicated standard to adhere to. Then
again good interoperability might not be in the best
interest of the tool vendors themselves due to "vendor
lock-in".
Which brings me back to the (provocative) subject line.
Surely it is lack of interoperability that prevents UML
from being truly universal? From a user's perspective the
answer to that question must be yes. If I spend (a lot of)
time in an independant UML tool or a programming language
which has an integrated UML tool, it would surely not be
unreasonable of me to expect to export and import my work
(model) into another tool or comparable programming language
--regardless of vendor or programming language (C++ to Ada,
for example). Besides, a product may be unavailable on
certain system platforms. Clearly this is more than a
matter of freedom of choice, however important that may be.
IMHO, interoperability should be a requirement of the UML
specification, for without it the universality of UML is
severly hampered.
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