Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

[Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)]

Hi folks,

I was thinking about using UML diagrams to express the overview of an
Ada design. Designing with Ada is already a kind of modelisation in
some way, but I was thinking it would be nice to have some diagrams
for a quicker and easier understanding and to have a more abstract
overview on the design.

But I know too much few about UML, so I'm looking for some examples of
Ada specifications and implementations source coming with their
associated UML diagrams. By the way, this will help me to go further
with UML (if its Ok to suppose there is nothing wrong in learning UML
using some Ada skills).

I'm not clearly an UML fan, as I think a source is more concret (it
can be checked and compiled and Ada allows to check standalone
specifications), but I still feel it should be good at documenting and
giving design overviews. I'm not to compare written and visual
languages, I guess the limites of each (the two dimensionel aspect of
visual language helps to give quick and easy overview, while a written
language is more handy at expressing a great amount of things).

So I'm coming with two questions : do you know a place with some
exemples and do you think UML diagrams can really helps in the
mentioned areas ?

P.S. I don't bother about weither or not users will know UML, as UML
diagrams are most of times intuitively understandable. But creating,
unlike reading such diagrams, requires more knowlegde of this
language.

Re: Will UML help to document Ada sources ?

[okellogg]

Importing an existing large Ada project into a UML tool can be helpful
to get an overview of the "with" dependencies among the packages. This
has helped me on one occasion with removing unwanted dependencies.

The problem with code import is information bloat - everything gets
imported, even the less important packages (e.g. implementation helper
packages etc.) so IMHO judiciously deleting the less significant parts
afterwards is important.

-- Oliver

Re: Will UML help to document Ada sources ?

[Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)]

On 19 juil, 17:58, okellogg <okell...@freenet.de> wrote:
> Importing an existing large Ada project into a UML tool can be helpful
> to get an overview of the "with" dependencies among the packages.
This is one of the thing I would find useful, and a bit more

For the time, I've just found these little examples:
http://www.sigada.org/conf/sigada2003/SIGAda2003-CDROM/SIGAda2003-Proceedings/Vendor-ILogix-UML-Rhapsody-in-Ada.pdf

Re: Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

[Marco]

On Jul 18, 4:01 pm, Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)
<yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I was thinking about using UML diagrams to express the overview of an
> Ada design. Designing with Ada is already a kind of modelisation in
> some way, but I was thinking it would be nice to have some diagrams
> for a quicker and easier understanding and to have a more abstract
> overview on the design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrello_UML_Modeller is free and does
Ada

  Personally I just use the Pavel Visio stencils. UML is good for
giving a big picture overview especially the sequence and state
diagrams. It bogs down when folks try to add too much detail in their
diagrams.

Re: Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

[Yannick Duchêne Hibou57]

On 25 juil, 16:27, Marco <prenom_no...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrello_UML_Modelleris free and does
> Ada
I've just checked about it, and as I'm a Windows XP user, I've looked
for a Windows binary build... and I found one : version 1.3.2 has been
ported and compiled for Cygwin by Jay Snyder (Cygwin just means this
will most likely requires some accessory DLLs). I will try it and then
report my experiences here if useful.
Direct link for Windows Binary (version 1.3.2 only) :
http://sourceforge.net/projects/uml/files/UML/umbrello-1.3.2/umbrello-1.3.2-cygwin-binary.tar.bz2/download

>   Personally I just use the Pavel Visio stencils. UML is good for
> giving a big picture overview especially the sequence and state
> diagrams. It bogs down when folks try to add too much detail in their
> diagrams.
I guess the same. Moreover, I do not need code generation, althought
this will help me to learn more about the way Ada programs big layout
can be maped into UML. Beside of that, I just plan to draw some
diagrams - nothing more (just feel sometime a two dimensional
graphical representation can help to see better) - and have to learn
about UML which I know too much few.

Thanks for the tip to both of you, Marco and Okellogg

Re: Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

[Yannick Duchêne Hibou57]

continuation ...

For Umbrello on Windows, it is a lot simpler to just install KDE for
Windows. From this address : http://windows.kde.org/ choose “ Download
Installer ”. Then, when after some steps, the installer request you to
select components to install, just check the box labelled “ kdesdk
(umbrello, kate) ”. Don't bother about other components, as any
required dependencies will be automatically determined by the
installer.

That's all (it seems)

P.S. I used to have a KDE for Windows, but removed it (there was no
Umbrello I think at the time, or I did not noticed it).

Re: Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

[Yannick Duchêne Hibou57]

It works fine. After playing quicly with it, I could learn - as an
example - the Ada child package relation is mapped as a containment
relation between two UML packages. That's exactly what I was looking
for.

This application is copyrighted Paul Hensgen 2002-2006. May be this
means this was developped during 4 years. I've found nothing clear
about him on the web (was thinking he was in some big compagny).
Perhaps a kind of discreet artist (hello Paul, if you're over there).

Re: Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

[Yannick Duchêne Hibou57]

I'm not really versed in UML, so I may be wrong, but it seems there
are some suspected troubles with the conformity of Umbrello against
UML.

In a previous post, I've talked about the containment association. It
seems that while this term appears in the UML specification, the
symbol used by Umbrello for this association, does not exist in the
UML Superstructure reference document.

Then, Umbrello does not allow to create a composition link between two
Ada packages. I suspect it to be errorneous, as UML seems to allow it
(the containment relation, seems to be indeed, a composition
relation).

XMI file produced by Umbrello seems to be known to be none-conforming
to wellformed XMI files (well... in the mean-time, XMI is not well
suited to exchange UML diagrams).

I'm falling back to StarUML (and leaving a note here for any one
interested). StartUML does not support Ada, but any way, UML is not a
compilable language (side note: there is an Executable UML somewhere
in the place), and there is no need for any language support to draw
shemas intended to document.

It can be found here : http://staruml.sourceforge.net/

StarUML can be extended with UML profiles (an extention mechanism
which is part of the UML standard), which should allow interested
parties to extend it to cleanly represent Ada architectures in UML.

Re: Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

[okellogg]

On Jul 27, 10:45 am, Yannick Duchêne Hibou57
<yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> I'm not really versed in UML, so I may be wrong, but it seems there
> are some suspected troubles with the conformity of Umbrello against
> UML.
>
> In a previous post, I've talked about the containment association. It
> seems that while this term appears in the UML specification, the
> symbol used by Umbrello for this association, does not exist in the
> UML Superstructure reference document.

That may be so but e.g. the UML Profile for CORBA does use the
"+"-inside-circle symbol for containmeint association.
That's where we got the idea from.

> Then, Umbrello does not allow to create a composition link between two
> Ada packages. I suspect it to be errorneous, as UML seems to allow it
> (the containment relation, seems to be indeed, a composition
> relation).

You are using a relatively version (1.3.2) and this has been fixed.
I recommend using 1.5.8 or newer.

> XMI file produced by Umbrello seems to be known to be none-conforming
> to wellformed XMI files (well... in the mean-time, XMI is not well
> suited to exchange UML diagrams).

This is a further area where improvements were made since 1.3.2.

> I'm falling back to StarUML (and leaving a note here for any one
> interested).

Yes, StarUML is great.
Too bad it is not being maintained or further developed.

Oliver

Re: Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

[Yannick Duchêne Hibou57]

On 29 juil, 07:43, okellogg <okell...@freenet.de> wrote:
> That may be so but e.g. the UML Profile for CORBA does use the
> "+"-inside-circle symbol for containmeint association.
> That's where we got the idea from.
Thanks for the explanation

> You are using a relatively version (1.3.2) and this has been fixed.
> I recommend using 1.5.8 or newer.
I tried the one shipped with KDE for Windows

> This is a further area where improvements were made since 1.3.2.
Yes, but do not be too hard with yourself, as the job already done is
already nice.

> Yes, StarUML is great.
> Too bad it is not being maintained or further developed.
Right, the last developpement occured in 2005 and there will be no
more from the original author (this is sure).
The initial owner allow any one to update it or to provide commercial
support for it (there is a special page with some links to some
compagnies), but the source depends on some third partie materials,
and further more, mostly old versions of these materials, which are
not supported any more by DevExpress (the provider of these
components)... and Delphi Pro is too much expensive.

Well, ...

By the way, a little side annouce : if anyone is interested in a
native Windows validating editor for UML targeting Ada, this would be
a project I would enjoy to start. For any license, providing I could
get fund for it (the developpement), make me now (I'm seeking for
interesting Ada related projects to work on at the time).

Re: Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

[Vadim Godunko]

On Jul 31, 1:51 am, Yannick Duchêne Hibou57 <yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr>
wrote:
>
> By the way, a little side annouce : if anyone is interested in a
> native Windows validating editor for UML targeting Ada, this would be
> a project I would enjoy to start. For any license, providing I could
> get fund for it (the developpement), make me now (I'm seeking for
> interesting Ada related projects to work on at the time).

I have old idea to develop general purpose, cross platform UML
modeller in Ada, using QtAda as cross platform GUI library, and
providing GUI independent core libraries for UML model processing.

Re: Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

[Yannick Duchêne Hibou57]

On 31 juil, 14:38, Vadim Godunko <vgodu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have old idea to develop general purpose, cross platform UML
> modeller in Ada,
what do you mean when you say “ general purpose ” ?

> using QtAda as cross platform GUI library,
I've just check about Qt, and there is an LGPL version, which would
make it well suited for any kind of license.
But why exactly the choice of Qt above any others ?

> and providing GUI independent core libraries for UML model processing.
You mean a GUI abstraction ?
But why a GUI abstraction if there is the thought to specifically
target the Qt GUI ?

Any business model in sight ?

I you want to talk about it in more details (this is not really the
place for it here), feel free to a-mail me

Have a nice time Vadim

Re: Will UML helps to document Ada sources ?

[Vadim Godunko]

On Jul 31, 4:54 pm, Yannick Duchêne Hibou57 <yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr>
wrote:
> On 31 juil, 14:38, Vadim Godunko <vgodu...@gmail.com> wrote:> I have old idea to develop general purpose, cross platform UML
> > modeller in Ada,
>
> what do you mean when you say “ general purpose ” ?
>
I mean suitable for any kinds of use, not only Ada target code. Today
(unfortunately for me) most UML modellers provides its one "view" on
UML and how it must be used (usually they are targeted to different
programming languages); but UML is not a concrete language, in
conjunction with MDA it can be used at any abstraction level, thus
each construction can be used to represent different things on
different abstraction level.

> But why exactly the choice of Qt above any others ?
>
There are two cross platform GUI toolkits for now: GtkAda and QtAda.
Among others nice things Qt includes "ready-to-use" and very powerful
graphics scene/graphics view framework, it allows to have more object-
oriented code when GtkAda allows and so on.

> > and providing GUI independent core libraries for UML model processing.
>
> You mean a GUI abstraction ?
> But why a GUI abstraction if there is the thought to specifically
> target the Qt GUI ?
>
I mean set of libraries for access and manipulation by UML models for
development of third-party tools, like model transformation tools or
code generation tools.

> Any business model in sight ?
>
No, it is just a hobby project based on my experience.