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Eclipse Gets Lightweight Dependency Modeling


By Edward J. Correia
February 1, 2006 — 
Suffering the boxes and arrows of outrageous UML? Take arms against a sea of scalability troubles, and by Eclipse, end them.

Lattix, developer of architecture management tools, in mid-January released LDM for Eclipse, a version of its Lightweight Dependency Model that permits developers to analyze highly complex software systems and diagram component interdependencies simply.

“The problem with UML is that it doesn’t scale,” claimed Neeraj Sangal, president and co-founder of the Boston-based Lattix, referring to UML’s method of illustrating software architecture, which uses boxes and arrows to represent dependencies among components. “When you have thousands of boxes and arrows, it becomes very hard to follow.”

LDM illustrates complex systems using Design Structure Matrix (DSM), a decades-old technology that gained notoriety in the 1990s when MIT used it to model complex processes at Boeing, General Motors and Intel. Lattix claims to offer the first product to apply DSM to software systems.

“The biggest benefit of LDM is that it’s highly scalable. We have built systems with 20,000 classes in them,” claimed Sangal. The Eclipse framework itself is one such example, said Frank Waldman, Lattix’s co-founder and vice president. Lattix joined the Eclipse Foundation earlier in January as an add-in provider.

The software is available for Linux and Windows in two editions, both released on Jan 16. A free and fully functional Community edition can analyze an unlimited number of systems of any size; a US$4,995 Enterprise edition adds the ability to create architecture rules that can permit or forbid certain dependencies.

“Once a dependency model is created, rules can be designed based on those dependencies,” explained Waldman. “Then LDM creates a remediation list for dependencies that shouldn’t be there,” he said. The software then offers advice on how to fix or change illegal dependencies. “This also lets developers see who they impact, how they are impacted and who they are impacted by,” added Sangal.

The Eclipse-based tool, first unveiled at BZ Media’s EclipseWorld Conference in August, is more capable than Lattix’s stand-alone LDM product. “In the Eclipse version you can see the code,” said Waldman. “And if you make a violation while you’re coding, you will see the violation in real time. So a developer never has to check in code that violates the architecture rules.” BZ Media is the publisher of SD Times.

New since August is conceptual charting, which Sangal described as a hierarchical representation of complex systems simplified for nontechnical staff. “The conceptual [view] is for communicating [systems] to a wide audience of managers, QA people and so on.”

Sangal claimed another advantage over UML: better code-to-model synchronization. “Round-trip engineering is hard [to achieve]. With LDM, it is an automatic part of the build process and code is always synchronized.”

Waldman said that UML and LDM also can be used together. “UML is very good for the detailed design. People use it to design class diagrams and to describe the system they are working on. [LDM] gives you the high-level, big-picture view,” he said, while maintaining an aggregated view. “All the interdependencies are represented on-screen.”


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