Visual Paradigm for UML
{{ Infobox Software | name = Visual Paradigm for UML | logo = | developer = Visual Paradigm International Ltd. | latest_release_version = 6.1 Service Pack 1 | latest_release_date = Nov 19 2007 | operating_system = Cross-platform | genre = UML CASE Tool | license = Proprietary with Free Community EDition | website = http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/vpuml/ }}
Visual Paradigm for UML is a UML CASE Tool supporting the latest version of the Unified Modeling Language(UML) and the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) by the Object Management Group (OMG). In addition to UML modeling support, it provides business process modeling, an object-relational mapping generator for Java, .NET and PHP. There is a free Community Edition for non-commercial use (without generation of code and database tables).
UML Modeling
Visual Paradigm for UML supports 13 UML diagrams. UML diagrams supported are:
- Class diagram
- Use case diagram
- Sequence diagram
- Communication diagram
- State machine diagram
- Activity diagram
- Component diagram
- Deployment diagram
- Package diagram
- Object diagram
- Composite structure diagram
- Timing diagram
- Interaction overview diagram
Business Process Modeling
Visual Paradigm for UML Enterprise Edition supports the latest version of BPMN . There are two Business Process Modeling Diagrams: Business Process Diagram (BPD) and Data Flow Diagram (DFD). BPD shows the design for modeling business activity within and between organizations. The BPMN is a simple yet powerful notation for modeling workflows. BPMN is designed for both business analysts and IT professionals.
The DFD is another important tool for the business analyst to model data and document flow in the real world or in an IT system.
Database Modeling
There are two kinds of data modeling diagrams, the Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) and the Object Relational Mapping Diagram (ORM Diagram). The ERD is used to model the relational database at the physical level. The ORM Diagram shows the mapping between class and entity. The ORM Diagram is a tool to show the mapping between the class from object-oriented world and the entities in the relational database world.
Code Generation
A key feature of VP UML Professional is its ability to generate not only code from a class model, but also the relational database structure (tables or schemata) suited to persistenly hold the data contained in so-called entity classes. VP UML allows for different starting points:
- reverse engineer the ERD from an existing database, and generate matching code classes
- start with a class model, generate an ERD, database tables and code from it
- start with an ERD, generate a class model, database tables and code from it.
Code generated comprises
- the classes themselves for objects modeled in class diagrams
- controller classes Providing reading, writing, and deleting functions for database entries
- the latter follow one of several patterns: DAO, Factory class, or static methods
- example code for generating data in the DB, reading and deleting it
- (optionally) JavaServer Pages/ASP .NET pages for the entities modeled