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Review: Altova UModel 2005
by Drew Falkman
Unified Modeling Language™ (UML) is more than a construct for designing applications. It is an entire system for planning applications—from determining use cases to outlining a program's flow down to more code level planning like components and class design, then synchronizing with source code. The ultimate ideal: programming with pictures. Many enterprise level development shops and in-house teams are using UML, but after ten years, it hasn't yet acquired the mass momentum one would expect for such a revolutionary concept. Still, development companies including Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM (with their notable buyout of Rational, the UML pioneers) provide toolsets and integration with their IDEs. But these tool are traditionally quite expensive, and that's where Altova plans to capitalize. At an introductory rate of just $129.00, UModel seems like a good tool for smaller development shops to test the UML waters.
Introduction
Altova is the company that brought us XMLSpy, a great XML editor, and develops other XML tools that have achieved high praise from developer's worldwide. UModel is their latest offering, and represents a dive into the world of UML and application modeling (specifically Model-Driven Applications, or MDA). I should be frank in that my personal experience with UML has been somewhat limited, and this is due to the high cost of entry (decent supported tools for this technology generally cost at least $500.00, often a lot more) as well as the fact that I stubbornly stick to my own planning process, for better or (more likely) for worse. I saw the release of UModel and thought maybe it was time for a change.
Installation and Getting Started
UModel (and all other Altova products) are made for Windows only (supported: NT, 2000, XP, and Server 2003). The installation was worth mentioning, only in that it was so easy. It didn't even prompt for where to place the files. Click install, done. Enough said.
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