Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on August 30, 2005 05:12 AM
Yes, it would be nice if more open-source projects included some form of graphical documentation, rather than just the standard API docs. At work, we have charts on the wall showing the basic structure of the components of our system, and similar visual representations would be useful for complex projects like KDE or Gnome...
Two issues though:
1. UML is over-used. It's a useful tool for providing a graphical representation of a system, but generating code from that representation is rarely anything but problematic, and it's hard to keep code and UML in sync. Complex tools that maintain the state of the model in a database are overkill in almost every case, when a simple diagramming tool is likely sufficient.
2. Rational Rose is the benchmark? Oh dear... certainly, it's the market leader for such tools, but a more sorry excuse for an enterprise tool I'd be hard-pressed to find. A complicated interface, prone to crashing... quite a few people I know favour ArgoUML, rather than using the existing Rose licenses...
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Nice, but don't go overboard..
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on August 30, 2005 05:12 AMTwo issues though:
1. UML is over-used. It's a useful tool for providing a graphical representation of a system, but generating code from that representation is rarely anything but problematic, and it's hard to keep code and UML in sync. Complex tools that maintain the state of the model in a database are overkill in almost every case, when a simple diagramming tool is likely sufficient.
2. Rational Rose is the benchmark? Oh dear... certainly, it's the market leader for such tools, but a more sorry excuse for an enterprise tool I'd be hard-pressed to find. A complicated interface, prone to crashing... quite a few people I know favour ArgoUML, rather than using the existing Rose licenses...
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