Question: Visio and Mutiple Users (UML Modeling)

[Eric Tobia]

Hello,

I have a question regarding multiple developers collaborating on a UML
model using Visio.

First some background. My team has been using Rational Rose for years
and we are in the midst of evaluating alternatives. We believe that
we would be better served by a simpler tool than Rose, as our UML
modeling requirements are more or less concentrated on the ability to
create sequence diagrams and class diagrams (NOT the whole litany of
additional functionality provided by Rose). We basically want to
simplify things and make designing our objects a less cumbersome
process.

Now to the problem. Rose provided a feature that supported multi-user
development that we can not seem to find/duplicate in Visio.

The feature Rose gave us was the ability to break up a UML model into
physical files (.cat files). This provided us with two benefits that
came in handy while doing team development.

1) The ability to break up a model so that multiple developers could
work on different pieces of it at the same time

2) The ability have "common files" that you could reference elsewhere
in the model, enabling one to do things like reuse existing class
definitions

Does Visio (any version) provide functionally that would support this
type of model development?

If not, is there any way that we could achieve our multi-user
requirements (model compartmentalization, reuse) using Visio?

Any light that anyone can shed on this issue will be most appreciated.

Thanks,

Eric

 

[Paul Herber]

Hello,

I have a question regarding multiple developers collaborating on a UML
model using Visio.

First some background. My team has been using Rational Rose for years
and we are in the midst of evaluating alternatives. We believe that
we would be better served by a simpler tool than Rose, as our UML
modeling requirements are more or less concentrated on the ability to
create sequence diagrams and class diagrams (NOT the whole litany of
additional functionality provided by Rose). We basically want to
simplify things and make designing our objects a less cumbersome
process.

Now to the problem. Rose provided a feature that supported multi-user
development that we can not seem to find/duplicate in Visio.

The feature Rose gave us was the ability to break up a UML model into
physical files (.cat files). This provided us with two benefits that
came in handy while doing team development.

1) The ability to break up a model so that multiple developers could
work on different pieces of it at the same time

2) The ability have "common files" that you could reference elsewhere
in the model, enabling one to do things like reuse existing class
definitions

Please try our SanDri-La Visio add-on.
http://www.sandrila.pherber.com/

I believe it will do all the above.
It's an impementation of UML2 based on SDL for real-time and telecomms
applications.
It won't yet do reverse engineering but it will do CIF import
(packages, system and block diagrams only in the demo version).

Since the release of Version 3 on thursday last week, we've had 2
customers who want SanDri-La just for importing, printing and OLE'ing
diagrams from Telelogic Tau. Visio makes this so much easier.