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(FC-Devel) UXF & XMI, expectations
Hi Jason, hi all.
Jason wrote:
...
> First, it looks pretty clear that XMI will be approved by OMG as the
> standard for UML model interchange. I have not seen any substancial
> support for any other format.
That is also my impression. FreeCASE will IMHO support XMI.
It's in the requirements (that is no garantee, though).
> From email exchanged with many Argo/UML
> users I have found that there are millions of features that they
> expect,...
Would you share (some of) those expected features with us, Jason?
That might help getting the requirements more specific.
Uche wrote:
> >UXF is basically a lightweight, XML-based format for describing UML
> >structures. It covers class, collaboration and statechart diagrams.
> >The Web site is at http://www.yy.cs.keio.ac.jp/~suzuki/project/uxf/
> >I underscore the word "lightweight". There are other related standards
> >(CDIF, XMI, RDF, etc.) going through standards bodies, but they are
> >largely huge, complex, and tied to other meta-data initiatives such
> >as MOF.
[Jason]
> ...Second, my impression of UXF is similiar to that of Uche's: it is
> much simpler than XMI. However, XMI is not too hard to implement
> because it follows the standard UML meta-model very closely. Once you
> figure out the basic structure of the XMI DTD, it should pretty
> familiar to anyone who has worked with the UML meta-model.
Does this mean that you think FreeCASE should support XMI
early on? If so, maybe you can update the reference app
accordingly? While you are at it could you contribute a
(running :-) java-specific one?
I may be asking much, I really don't know. If so,
forgive me. The simplicity of the UxF, like Uche stated:
> >UXF is meant to do one job (UML exchange), and do it well.
> >It is not meant to be a general meta-data repository exchange
> >format, so it's much smaller, cleaner, and you can understand it at
> >first glance.
is a point very much in it's favour.
{Jason]
> Also, I found that UXF organizes its structure around diagrams
> rather than meta-model packages, that is not a good match for a
> tool that allows the same object to be shown in multiple diagrams.
I noticed that.
For now it only means that with the UxF we can communicate
on a per-diagram basis (that is better than no communication at
all).
E.g. ObjectTeam or as it is now known Cool:Jex, a multi-user
UML-CASEtool locks on a per-diagram basis, so we're not even
to far off I guess.
Furthermore it does not seem unlikely that the UxF will evolve -
maybe even from within the FreeCASE community.
> I chose to use PGML to represent diagrams rather than XMI.
Why?
> I am working on debugging my use of XMI and PGML now and I hope to
> release Argo/UML v0.6 with these features sometime next week.
Good luck!
> For more information, see:
> http://www.ibm.com/xmi/
> http://www.software.ibm.com/ad/features/xmi.html
> http://www.w3c.org/TR/1998/NOTE-PGML
> http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/arch/uml
Have fun,
Danny