I found ArgoUML (i'm open to other OOP UML tools if you have any suggestions - before I get too deep into my project).
Is there a way to automatically generate getters and setters for all attributes/fields?
If not, can you suggest a UML tool that can.
Thanks.
There are bunch of different free tools available for UML modeling and forward engineering your code through it.
We have used Eclipse Plugin to create UML diagrams that generates boilerplate code.
In case you are using java - You can also try AndroMDA which accepts UML files as input to generate a CRUD Java application.
I am sure there must be similar tools available for other languages too.
Check this SO thread - How to generate UML diagrams (especially sequence diagrams) from Java code
Before really getting deep into using UML you may also want to read this thread - Do you still use UML? How? What for?
and
Is UML practical?
Related
I am beginning in UML and software analyse and i do not understand how UML and diagrams can influence coding and software architecture while we can directly build the code and its data base without diagrams.
I read lot of tutorials abouat the subject but not enough to understand the utility of UML in coding.
I understand everey diagram and its role. That is not my problem but i do not yet understand their roles after the analyse and design phase.
So what is the role of UML in coding phase of a software ?
Thank you.
The comment by #xmojmr already puts it right. UML creates a model (hence the M in UML) of a system. A model reduces information of a system to a level so it is a) manageable and b) complete. Human brains are not computers and you need a means of communication what the system is all about. You can do that as pure code, as paper document and as UML model. A combination of all is not uncommon. As long as you have tiny systems you can live with pur code and tools like Doxygen. But once it starts getting complex you need some handles. UML offers these to end users, architects, testers, developers, managers, etc. Along with UML you will also need a methodology. UML delivers the syntax how to document a system. But you need some structure above to write a nice novel.
UML-based models play an essential role for coding/implementing a software system in model-based (or model-driven) development. The basic idea is that you start making a model of your problem domain (the domain model), then you derive from it a platform-independent design model, which can be transformed into platform-specific implementation models (e.g. for Java- or C#-based platforms) that are finally encoded in the target languages.
The most prominent part of model-based development is the encoding of model classes (forming the model layer in an MVC architecture for apps) based on a data model (a UML class model) that has been derived from an information design model, which was obtained from a domain information model (where all these information/data models are UML class models).
You can find an instructive example of model-based development in my tutorial book Engineering Front-End Web Apps with Plain JavaScript.
This one is in my point of view a duplicate of that other question. It can't be flagged because there is no accepted answer. The related question on meta stackexchange does not provide a clear solution to that situation.
I think my personal answer was relevant and is applicable to the current question.
To be synthetic, Martin Fowler considers current uses of UML. I think he describe the current practices. Perhaps should these evolve ?
Perhaps would the initial question be the right place to discuss ?
Suppose I have written a library in a programming language (e.g. Java) to interact with an external component (e.g. a database).
I would now like the community to provide implementations in other languages.
How can I enable and encourage, other developers to provide implementations that are identical in functionality to mine.
Some examples may be:
Provide a written specification of behaviour
Provide a reference implementation
Provide a testing framework so they can validate their implementation (can this be done across multiple languages?)
What other options are available?
Common approach of all that you are after for, can be the abstraction level of Coding conventions. Since they are set of guidelines for a programming languages that recommend programming style, practices and methods for each aspect of a piece program written. These conventions usually cover file organization,indentation, comments, declarations,statements, white space, naming conventions, programming practices,programming principles, programming rules of thumb, architectural best practices, etc.
About
enable and encourage, other developers to provide implementations that are identical in functionality to mine.
you can use Interfaces (protocols). Even if they are used to define an abstract type that contains no data or code, they also define behaviors as method signatures.
Your examples are good. But in addition to
Provide a testing framework so they can validate their implementation
you can introduce the main ideas of the Test-driven development:
Establishing the goals of different stakeholders required for a vision to be implemented
Drawing out features which will achieve those goals using feature injection
The goal of developer TDD is to specify a detailed, executable design for your solution
read more
I am curious to learn about creating a domain specific language. For now the domain is quite basic, just have some variables and run some loops, if statements.
Edit :The language will be Non-English based with a very simple syntax .
I am thinking of targeting the Java Virtual Machine, ie compile to Java byte code.
Currently I know how to write some simple grammars using ANTLR.
I know that ANTLR creates a lexer and parser but how do I go forward from here?
about semantic analysis: does it have to be manually written or are there some tools to create it?
how can the output from the lexer and parser be converted to Java byte code?
I know that there are libraries like ASM or BCEL but what is the exact procedure?
are there any frameworks for doing this? And if there is, what is the simplest one?
You should try Xtext, an Eclipse-based DSL toolkit. Version 2 is quite powerful and stable. From its home page you have plenty of resources to get you started, including some video tutorials. Because the Eclipse ecosystem runs around Java, it seems the best choice for you.
You can also try MPS, but this is a projectional editor, and beginners may find it more difficult. It is nevertheless not less powerful than Xtext.
If your goal is to learn as much as possible about compilers, then indeed you have to go the hard way - write an ad hoc parser (no antlr and alike), write your own semantic passes and your own code generation.
Otherwise, you'd better extend an existing extensible language with your DSL, reusing its parser, its semantics and its code generation functionality. For example, you can easily implement an almost arbitrary complex DSL on top of Clojure macros (and Clojure itself is then translated into JVM, you'll get it for free).
A DSL with simple syntax may or may not mean simple semantics.
Simple semantics may or may not mean easy translation to a target language; such translations are "technically easy" only if the DSL and the target languate share a lot of common data types and execution models. (Constraint systems have simple semantics, but translating them to Fortran is really hard!). (You gotta wonder: if translating your DSL is easy, why do you have it?)
If you want to build a DSL (in your case you stick with easy because you are learning), you want DSL compiler infrastructure that has whatever you need in it, including support for difficult translations. "What is needed" to handle translating all DSLs to all possible target languages is clearly an impossibly large set of machinery.
However, there is a lot which is clear that can be helpful:
Strong parsing machinery (who wants to diddle with grammars whose structure is forced
by the weakness of the parsing machinery? (If you don't know what this is, go read about LL(1) grammmars as an example).
Automatic construction of a representation (e.g, an abstract syntax tree) of the parsed DSL
Ability to access/modify/build new ASTs
Ability to capture information about symbols and their meaning (symbol tables)
Ability to build analyses of the AST for the DSL, to support translations that require
informatoin from "far away" in the tree, to influence the translation at a particular point in the tree
Ability to reogranize the AST easily to achieve local optimizations
Ability to consturct/analysis control and dataflow information if the DSL has some procedural aspects, and the code generation requires deep reasoning or optimization
Most of the tools available for "building DSL generators" provide some kind of parsing, perhaps tree building, and then leave you to fill in all the rest. This puts you in the position of having a small, clean DSL but taking forever to implement it. That's not good. You really want all that infrastructure.
Our DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit has all the infrastructure sketched above and more. (It clearly doesn't, and can't have the moon). You can see a complete, all-in-one-"page", simple DSL example that exercises some ineresting parts of this machinery.
In the recent question "How to organize MATLAB code?" Andrew Janke mentioned in his answer using classes to organize MATLAB functions into packages:
... consider rewriting some of the code as objects, using stateless utility
classes with class methods and private functions as ways of packaging related
functions together and providing some encapsulation. ... In
classic MATLAB, classes are your only way of doing some sort of packages.
Would you please provide more information on it? Links, code examples to understand the concept.
Loren hosted a guest blogger to discuss this issue:
http://blogs.mathworks.com/loren/2008/08/18/when-to-create-classes-in-matlab/
I made a simple video about this:
http://blogs.mathworks.com/videos/2008/07/07/advanced-matlab-class-system-for-oop-in-matlab-introduction/
Of course the MATLAB documentation for this:
http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/matlab_oop/brh2rgw.html
Don't use classes for packaging
Classes in Matlab has known limitaitons (starting with performance scalability, etc).
Before going into using OOP in MATLAB, first learn "+" packaging (i.e. not "#" or handles).
Statements like import foo.bar work just as expected (also check this).
A word of caution: if you really need OOP, just consider picking another language before doing it in MATLAB. I had to rewrite my OOP MATLAB code back to functions and packages because OOP implementation by Mathworks is just "immature". First troubles start with parfor where stuff has to be serialized with an overhead and then still breaks way too often.
I am currently trying to draw a set of UML diagrams to represent products, offers, orders, deliveries and payments. These diagrams have probably been invented by a million developers before me.
Are there any efforts to standardize the modeling of such common things? Or even the modeling of specific domains (for example car-manufacturing).
Do you know if there is some sort of repository containing UML diagrams (class diagrams, sequence diagrams, state diagrams...)?
There is a movement for documenting (as opposed to standardizing) models for certain domains. These are called analysis patterns and is a term Martin Fowler came up with. He actually wrote a book called Analysis patterns. Also, he has a dedicated section on his website where he presents some of these patterns accompanied by UML diagrams.
Maybe you'll find some inspiration that will help you in modeling your domain. I've stressed the word inspiration as I think different businesses have different requirements although they operate the same domain so the solutions you might read about may not be appropriate for your problem.
There are many tools out there that do both - but they're generally not free!
Microsoft Visio does both and is extensible. For UML artefacts they come with auto generators into VB/Java template code - but you can modify them to auto-generate any code. There are many users of Visio that have created models from which to use as templates.
Artisan Enterprize is by far the most powerful UML tool (but it's not cheap).
Some would argue that Rational Rose or RUP is the better tool
But for Car-Manufacturing and other similar real world modelling, by far the best tool is Mathworks Simulink (not because it's one of the most expensive). It is by far the best tool beccause you can animate the model - you can prove the model working before generating the slik code (in whatever grammar/language/other Models you care to push it)!
You can obtain a student license for around £180; with the 'real thing' pushing £4000 (for car-related artefacts). The full product with all the trimmings is about £15k. Simulink is also extensible with a C like language though there is a .Net addin and APIs to use a plethora of other langhuages. And, just like Visio there is a world-wide forum creating saleable, shareware & freeware real world model templates. Many world-wide Auto-Manufacturers are already using Simulink.
I think that MiniQuark question is really good and will sooner or later be provided by vendors such as Omondo, Rational IBM etc... Users doesn't just need tools, they need models out of the box and just add their business rules inside an existing well defined architecture. Why to develop from scratch a new architecture if the job has already be done ? In Java we use plenty of frameworks, existing methods etc...so why not to go one level higher and reuse architecture ? It is today impossible to guess how a project will evole and new demands are coming every day. We therefore need a stable architecture which has been tested previously and is extensible. I have seen so many projects starting with a nice architecture then realizing in the middle of the project that this is not what is the best and then changing their architecture. Renaming classes, splitting classes, creating packages etc...after the first iteration it is getting a real mess. Could you imagine what we found after 10 iterations !! a total mess !!
This mess would had been avoided if using a predefined model which has been tested previously because the missing class, or package etc..would have already been created and only a class rename would be sufficient for architecture purposes. Adding business rules methods will end the codding stage before deployment test.
I think there is a confusion between patterns and the initial question which is related to UML model re usability.
There is no today any reusable model out of the box which has been developped. This is really strange but the job has never been done or never been shared.
Omondo has tried to launch an initiative without real success. I have heard that they are working on hundred of out of box models which will be open source and given for free to the community. I hope this will be done because this is really important for me and would save me a lot of time at the beginning of a project.