Umbrello UML Modeller

Software Engineering and Free Software

• Free Software development has a reputation for not following software engineering processes

Umbrello UML Modeller

Software Engineering and Free Software

• This is a feature, not a bug
• Project usually start to fill a need
• Development continues if people find it useful and have other needs
• Using software modelling doesn't mean taking on the whole software engineering process

Umbrello UML Modeller

Unified Modelling Language

• UML == Unified Modelling Language
• Not to be confused with User Mode Linux
• Industry standard for drawing diagrams of software
• Offers abstraction from code that you can't get with a text editor
• Mostly programming language independant, but...
• Object Orientated
• Syntax has similarities to C++ and Java

UML Diagrams

Use Case diagrams

• Use Case diagrams show relation between program and external users/systems
• Most abstract fromm final code, used for specifying requirements

UML Diagrams

Class Diagrams

• Shows classes, their attributes and operations and the relationships between them
• Probably the most useful diagram type

UML Diagrams

Sequence Diagrams

• Shows the flow of control between objects
• Method calls or general pseudocode, can get fairly close to final implementation

• Also Collaboration diagrams do the same thing in a different layout

UML Diagrams

State and Activity Diagrams

• Finite state machines

What is UML good for?

• Planning program requirements (use cases)
• Planning class structure
• Sharing plans with other developers being a standard language everyone can understand them
• Documenting your current code structure
• Very useful to refer to when programming
• Helps people new to the code base become familiar with it even more important for distributed development, might not be anyone willing to explain code base

Umbrello

• UML diagramming tool
• Desktop and programming language independant but written using KDE
• Part of KDE since 3.2.
• Hopefully bringing UML modelling to Free software development

Umbrello Features

• Now implements all the diagram types of UML and most of the features of them
• Imports C++
• Export to a large range of languages
• File format (loosley) based on XMI, an XML language for UML
• Examples of users include Quanta HTML Editor, NASA and Nextphere AS

Umbrello Competition

• ArgoUML (Java swing interface, now propreitry as Poseidon)
• Proprietry: Together (patents!), Rational Rose
• General Diagramming Programs, not as suited to UML:
• Dia
• Kivio

Future

• Free Software Developers everywhere will design and document their programs in UML!
• Integration with KDevelop (moving target, requires changes to both Umbrello and KDevelop)
• Fix beasties.