(FC-Devel) FreeCase (fwd)

["Jeffrey M. Wolfe" <jwolfe@felgroup.creol.ucf.edu>]

I received this via email and wanted to share it with you.  I am going to
invite the author to join the list.

Jeff

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1998 13:22:55 +0200
From: "Dr. Thomas Fricke" <Thomas.Fricke@oen.siemens.de>
To: jwolfe@felgroup.creol.ucf.edu
Subject: FreeCase

Hello Jeff,

looking for +free +case +tool +linux the metacrawler send me to your
page. Good idea, but a tremendous think of work has to be done. From my
system design point of view I have made a priorisation according my 
needs: (1 most important, 2 important, 3 required, 4 less importantm, 5
 not needed)

-- 
>Here are the first cut features.  Please send in comments and additions! 

1    Completely free, likely GPL. 

1    Cross platform support, minimum both Linux and Windows NT. 
1    Complete support for UML 1.1 (OMG UML 1.0) - Derived requirement:
	 GUI Interface. 
2    Ability to use any UML symbol on any diagram. 
3    Ability to free draw on any diagram. 
1    Repository located on a TCP/IP network. 
	additional: a team must be able to work spread all over the 
	world.

1    Versioning and locking for objects, diagrams, source code, and
	 external documents. 
1    Extensibility - good tools must be customizable. 
3    Generate and reverse engineer source code - support for multiple
	 languages, customizable. 
1    Generate COM IDL and CORBA IDL
	+ Java + C++
	Unfortunately, Corba 2.0 is not a real super interface to Java
	 and C++, as it does not support distinguishing methods by
	 signatures
4    Security in the repository. 
1    Reporting. At least +HTML and +rtf.

>From an implementation perspective, we may be able to pick up some of >these features by integrating existing
>projects. 

At first, there  should be defined different layers, as the core (where
the repository resides) does not need to know the presentation layer,
where either the user interface is defined or the printed doc is
generated.

I think, with argo looking very nice at the first glance, we can cover
nearly all single tasks by free tools, which are available.

I could contribute a apache-corba interface module, developed for my own
studies, which would imply, that some of the presentations could be done
in a Java capable WebBrowser (argo running as an applet?). (A reliable
ORB is mico, with a nearly full standard Corba 2.0 implementation)

The repository could be accessed via the apache-corba interface to the,
where all security control over the net can be delegated to SSL. 

Things to define: the representation of diagrams (I will look into argo
next days).

First hypothesis (very raw)

Most things are containers.
	Diagrams contain classes, objects, relations
	Classes contain attributes, methods 
	Methods  contain argumentlist (in , out), a body etc.

If all containers are ready, source and basic types can be filled in as
objects. Therefore, all tools I know, rely on a lisp like structure,
where containers come from (look into a rational rose file!). 

It should be developed a modern container concept, perhaps Java, perhaps
from libg++, where this can be modeled more easily. I will look into
argo, if there is a reliable concept and try to map it to the needs of
the case tool.

If this project will succeed, it would case a little revolution in
developing software.  A few days ago, I have thought about starting such
a project, however,  I do really to have the time to manage such a
project. Nice coincidence: I either would have called it gnucase or
freeCase...

Would like to hear from you,
	bye 
		Thomas
-- 
Dr. Thomas Fricke
SIEMENS AG, OEN TR SW PT    
Fon: +49/30 386-36 344, Fax: -21928
Siemensdamm 62, D 13629 Berlin