Ted Johnson on Programming & Architecture

This post builds on previous posts ( 1 , 2 ) and is serves as additional commentary and context to a post by   Franco Civello -  UML for MDD - Oxymoron or match made in heaven?   Not sure what Model-Driven Development (MDD) is exactly, then check out IBM's MDD Redbook which is one perspective. UML is a modeling language with thousands of features and facets.  Most people discount UML, even experienced modelers and language developers, without understanding what the language is capable off.  The primary UML feature missed of importance here is the UML Profiles capability.  People miss that UML Profiles allow for extension and constraints of the language itself, read section 18 of the UML Superstructure or take a look at the UML profile catalog .  The two linked posts ( 1 , 2 ) speak to what UML profiles are etc, so you might consider reading them before proceeding.  This extension and constraint mechanism is exactly what is n...

Tonight I tried to find quick reference sheets for both UML and BPMN, free of course.  There are quite a fewer different terms for them be it poster, reference cards, cheat sheets, quick guides etc.  However, once I got into several sites by searching for "Reference Cards" I found the other names for these small printable guides to various technologies. Oh yes, and much more managable or likely to be used than " pocket references " which don't fit in your pocket. List of quality sites quick guides: refcardz.dzone.com itPoster.net (singular) cheat-sheets.org scribd.com/ (kind of) I did not find a suitable quality UML guide ( Stackoverflow has a list ), but the BPMN poster  at itPoster.net though outdated at time of this post was still really well done. There are several red herring links which get referenced a lot, but are not that good, ex: ( How are you to carry this around? ) Any other good sites that have a listing of printable reference guides?

Connecting UML Components with the Ball and Socket notation in Rational Software Modeler (RSM/RSA) and Eclipse UML2 Tools is not fully implemented or flawed. Too fully understand my point you have to keep in mind that these tools are for modeling, not just drawing a picture/diagram. Thus the internal model representation of what you diagram must be correct and complete. The Need: I discovered this issue while trying to design a suitable domain specific language/model for architects to talk about systems and what interfaces/data connections they had between them. The users understand components, so our systems were components. Additionally, interfaces at a high level make sense for being an "agreed upon" contract of interaction between systems. So, the components will realize the interfaces or > them to show providing and consumption between the systems. The figure below shows two examples of this. If you look closely at the diagram you will note that the ball and soc...

I have to admit that I am lured into the pocket size form factor used by O'Reilly and others. The cute baby animals on the cover, like the gorilla on the front of the " UML 2.0 - Pocket Reference " is just fun. I also have " The Elements of UML Style " in the same easy to consume and not really pocket sized size. Parts of this review also apply to both pocket books, but the majority is about the UML 2.0 - Pocket Reference. If you do actually end up bringing this "pocket" reference around with you then great, but consider when will you actually use it. While you are walking around the park thinking about UML and all of its confusing details? This book only covers syntax and usage, not really semantics which is where most people struggle anyhow, as the semantics and detailed syntax consume over 1000 pages. You could bring it to meetings and wow people with perfect diagrams. Again, this book might help with that, but how often are you drawing a di...

The short lesson: When looking at eclipse features dig deep and work off the website and examples. Books are outdated quickly and are often written to just the major usage of a package or feature. Never be to proud to use the eclipse project specific mailing list. The story: Whenever I take time off work, I invariably take on creating some new thing or read a technical book, basically just go down a rabbit hole of some kind as much of my day to day work requires abstraction from the details and hands on coding. The Christmas 2009 break is no different. This time I dug a little deeper than I normally do with eclipse and plug-ins. I have been creating an eclipse plug-in to import UML objects from an outside server which houses use cases, requirements, and test cases. I figure why copy and paste or manually sync them which you can have a wizard done. Great so after a COM Bridge, EMF Transactions, UML Profile, and a shovel I have an import working. I did not do this in a vacuum, ...