The Interface and Toolset
Using UModel is straightforward, like a combination between using a development IDE and a design tool like Microsoft Visio. The IDE concept of a project is the basket under which all diagrams in an application are contained. The project window in the upper left shows a tree containing diagrams and their elements (the model tree default view). Additionally, you can tab to the diagram tree which only contains the diagrams, or a list of favorites you can use for storing objects or other items that you re-use in different diagrams. Elements such as actors and new classes are created by clicking icons, dragging and dropping elements you have already created, or right clicking in the main diagram window. These items can be resized, moved, or linked (in the case of certain items) to others.
From the designer's perspective, there are a number of features that give flexibility and control. Cascading style sheets are utilized to control fonts, colors, lines, and other parameters. These can be edited visually in the styles window. The layout can be arranged in a number of ways, spaced out, make all items the same size and more. External images can be used to represent actors, allowing for higher-end diagrams to be more visually appealing for presentation to marketing and other business managers.
Additional tools are available for the developer's perspective. The Java language library can be included in your project. Properties of each item in a diagram can be visually edited using the properties window (under the projects window). Building objects is a snap.
Reverse and Round-trip Engineering
The key to MDA is to be able to modify a diagram and have it affect the code or, conversely, to modify the code and have your diagrams update. Otherwise, the whole process of managing diagrams along with code becomes overwhelming. Fortunately, UModel includes a number of tools that allow both importation of pre-developed code (called reverse engineering) and synchronization with an existing application (round trip engineering). UModel handles both types of MDA engineering. I tried the import feature and it worked pretty well. It didn't create any diagrams, but it did import all of the relevant classes and their information.
A Good Start
Altova extends themselves into the non-enterprise MDA space with this first release of UModel. Overall, I found UModel to be a good start—though many of the offerings were rudimentary and less feature-rich than what many other enterprise-level MDA tools have to offer (or some of the open source ones, but that's another subject). However, this is a good 1.0 version, the application is user friendly, the documentation is available and understandable, and the features it does include work well. I look forward to future implementations that include more diagram types and enhancements.
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