Of Diffrent Minds About Modeling
Industry mavens weigh in on UML, broader uses for visual representations
By Jennifer deJong
June 15, 2006 —
(Page 1 of 6)
Time was when UML was just UML. When modeling experts talked about the Unified Modeling Language, they were referring to the language used to communicate the design of a software application. The UML’s 13 diagram types—including Class, Object, Component, Sequence, Use Case and Activity—enabled development teams to map out the various pieces of software applications, and to specify how those pieces worked together.
But last month, when SD Times asked a team of five modeling experts to weigh in on UML’s future, it was clear the term UML had taken on a broader meaning. “The future is not just about UML, but about modeling in general—as a level of abstraction for describing systems,” said Richard Soley, chairman and CEO of Object Management Group, the industry consortium that maintains UML. Just shy of its 10-year anniversary, UML is also used to map out business processes, define business rules that help companies implement security policies and comply with government regulations, and to create new standards, such as SysML, used to describe complex engineering projects, the experts said.
Originating in 1997, UML underwent a significant upgrade in August 2003 when OMG formally adopted UML 2.0 and made it available to tool makers. The final version of UML 2.0 was published last August. UML 3.0 isn’t on the horizon yet. But the team of experts, which, in addition to OMG’s Soley, comprised Bran Selic from IBM, Jack Greenfield from Microsoft, Cris Kobryn from PivotPoint, and Jan Popkin from Telelogic, had plenty to say about code generation, round-trip engineering and what it will take to increase UML adoption among development teams.
SD Times posed the same set of question to each expert. What follows are excerpts from their responses.
SD Times: What is the future of UML?
Bran Selic, IBM: As a standard, UML is being maintained continuously. We have just completed UML 2.1, and already work on UML 2.2 is commencing. The scope of these point releases is mostly maintenance, confined to fixing any leftover inconsistencies or, in cases where the spec is ambiguous or incomplete, to adding clarifications.
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