On 2002-06-03 14:22 +0000, Oleg <oleg@tw304h3.cpmc.columbia.edu> wrote: > On Monday 03 June 2002 02:01 pm, Tommi Komulainen wrote: > > > On the topic of free UML modeling software, I've tried ArgoUML and > > Poseidon, but unfortunately they aren't quite comparable to Rose. Are > > there some other UML tools I've missed? (No, dia or kuml don't count.) > > What do you get from UML, that you don't get from class definitions (in > header files) ? Visual representation of the classes on suitable abstraction level. Kind of hard to get the big picture in one glimpse from several header files scattered around, don't you thinkg? From a simple UML diagram you can get that (almost) instantly. And that's just the class diagram part of UML. There's much more than just class diagrams in UML. Class diagrams help to understand how classes relate to each other (kind of, who does what) and that's propably the most used part of UML. Then there's sequence diagrams, showing how classes interact with each other (who talks to whom.) I'd argue that's at least as useful as class diagrams. Depends on the case, of course. The bottom line is, though, that UML is just notation. It is meant to help communicate how the software works (well, should work) in unified way. If you both know UML, you don't need to spend time defining terms the other might very easily misinterpret otherwise. Even though you don't need to explain how the stuff works to anyone else, I've found that it's much easier to go down into the details after you've figured out the big pieces first. -- Tommi Komulainen Tommi.Komulainen@iki.fi GPG 1024D/68388EE6 6FD6 DD79 EB38 BF6F 3533 09C0 04A8 9871 6838 8EE6
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