CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2013/ch1 1w48 x

Introduction

Object-Oriented(O-O) design tools are mainly used to create UML visual model for software design, such as the IBM® Rational Rose®, Microsoft Visio and PowerDesigner. The Unified Modeling Language(UML) is a standardized language approved by the Objective Management Group™ (OMG™). UML is used for sepcifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting models in software systems.The UML was developed by Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh at Rational Software in the 1990s.<ref>Marc Hamilton (1999) Software Development: A Guide to Building Reliable Systems p.48</ref>The UML has synthesized the notations of the Booch method, the Object-modeling technique (OMT) and Object-oriented software engineering (OOSE) by fusing them into a single, common and widely usable modeling language.<ref>OMG Unified Modeling Language (OMG UML), Superstructure. Version 2.4.1 http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.4.1/Superstructure</ref>

O-O Design Tools

There are a lot of object oriented design tools can be used for software development.<ref>List of UML modeling tools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unified_Modeling_Language_tools</ref> Rational Rose® is the most popular design tools used for developing complex software system.

IBM® Rational Rose®

Rational Rose® is a set of UML modeling tools for software design, which is produced and marketed by the Rational division of IBM (previous Rational Software Corporation, the developer of UML). By use of Rational Rose® software engineers can create visual models of software architectures, databases, application requirements and reusable assets. The Rational Rose® product family provides a set of model-driven capabilities for developing Java Platform, UNIX and Linux Platforms, and Microsoft Visual Studio-based software applications. Rational Rose® includes tools for reverse engineering and code generation of classes and architectures, for example, it allows software developers to generate code for Java Enterprise Edition software applications from visual models using the UML. Another advantage of Rational Rose is Add-Ins feature. This allows developers to install programming languages, such as C++, PowerBuilder, Forte, java, Visual Basic, and XML to generate necessary codes. Rational Rose® provides full team support. The team management features support the development of large and complex projects. By the help of configuration management and version control system, changes made to a model can be set available to other teammates.

Enterprise Architect

Enterprise Architect is a visual modeling, comprehensive UML analysis and design tool.

Enterprise Architect supports generation and reverse engineering of source code for many programming languages, such as ActionScript, C, C++, C#, PHP, Python and so on.<ref>Enterprise Architect http://www.sparxsystems.com/products/ea/index.html</ref> Like Rational Rose®, Enterprise Architect also provides full support for software system engineering. The reverse engineering supported by Enterprise Architect can help developers visualize applications of a wide range of programming languages and database repository schema.

Microsoft Visio

Microsoft Visio is a diagramming and vector graphics application. In Microsoft Visio Professional 2000, it first time provide support for UML modeling. The Microsoft Visio UML Model Diagram template provides full support for creating object-oriented models of complex software system. But it only support programming languages developed by Microsoft, such as Visual Basic, Visual Basic.NET and Microsoft Visual C#.NET.

Examples

O-O Design Tools example. Rational Rose

Hyperlinks to important terms

UML

List of UML Modeling tools

How to choose a UML modeling tool

Rational Rose

Microsoft Visio

PowerDesign

IBM Rational Software's UML Resource Page http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/uml/

References

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