For my project report, i need to show the class diagram of the software i've built which counts around 20 classes! The problem, is that when i render the class diagram in jpeg file(either using StarUML or ArgoUMl or whatever..) we can't see the details correctly (very big picture because of the large number of classes). Well, how to manage this situation correctly? Since the report is gonna be printed on A4 pages ?
Thanks !
With 20 classes I would expect at least 3 subsystems, (modules, layers), possibly more
Make package diagram showing the relation between those, one class diagram for each subsystem.
Add class diagrams for special things you want to show. Print each on A4.
If you can't split the diagram easily into modules, I'd consider that a design smell.
Its fun to print large diagrams on huge pieces of paper (like 500 tables on A0 ;-) but it really isn't of much use.
Producing a class diagram containing 20 classes is totally useless- what does it actually show? When using class diagrams I've never created a diagram that has more than about 5-8 classes on it.
The question to ask yourself is "what useful information am I trying to show with this diagram?". Don't produce a class diagram for the sake of it!
Breaking it down to demonstrate a particular design pattern, subsystem or component is what I find class diagrams useful for.
an other way is to not show all members but only the main ones, this reduce the size of the classes then the size of the diagram. Of course this suppose you use a tool allowing to choose which operations/attributs/relations must be visible, but this drawing setting is classical
may be you tool also have drawing setting to hide some part of the operation to reduce the width, for instance to show or not the parameters, or their direction, their type etc
Bouml (http://bouml.free.fr) has all this drawing options, and as it was said has PNG and SVG exports
best regards and happy modeling
Bruno
There are a few things you can do:
Bigger paper
Don't display method signatures
Don't display private methods
Partition your problem into more packages
Fewer classes per diagram
This is one of the problems with trying to treat UML like engineering drawings: Once you get it off a whiteboard, it's a poor language for communication. It doesn't read so well.
Generally a good way to deal with this is to create different diagrams for different modules or areas of functionality for your software. Alternately you could print the single image on multiple pages and show how to assemble them to form the full image.
I think it's the inherent problem that you're trying to show so many things in one diagram. Your question is just like "how can I put 100 words in a sentence without the reader getting tired of it?"
You can probably refactor it with FacadePattern. Basically it's just breaking down stuffs into modules. For e.g. Timesheet, PayCheck, BonusRecord can be ground into ManagementSystem. Product, Order can be grouped into OperationSystem, etc.
Use BOUML. The ArgoUML and StarUML are classics which everybody mention when it comes to question "is there any free UML software?". It's funny that being a historic software does not make the software unknown and unused. In case of Argo and Star the historic coefficient makes them known and used.
BOUML can export to SVG. This will solve your problems.I described the tool here
Thanks to SVG you will be able to quickly switch between birds eye view and detail view. I do this with Firefox. It's rapidly fast.
PS. I just noticed that you want to print the report. The SVG is then probably not what you want :\
Split your classes in several diagrams! When creating a UML model, you can have model elements such as classes displayed (no not) in several diagrams. A diagram is just a view of your UML model so that you can highlight modules in your specific diagrams.
Related
I've started to work on a quite big C++ project. I've used BOUML to import the code base with the intention to create a visual UML diagram.
Now I've reversed the project and I see the classes, namespaces, methods and such in the project browser but I can't figure out how to create a graphical UMl from it, may anyone here help me?
Manually draggign the elements from the browser into the main area doesn't seem to be allowed as the cursor gets a forbidden icon and dropping the elments doesn't do anything then... how do I even create the UML myself?
muszeo2 is right, the reverse create the packages / views / artifacts and classes and their members, after you have to create the diagrams by yourself. Sorry but BoUML is not extra lucid and it cannot by itself create the right diagrams of the right kind containing the right elements with the right drawing options ;-) So create your diagrams and drag&drop the elements you want to show etc, they are several features helping you to make diagrams with elements already created or not.
I also made some video tutorials available on https://www.bouml.fr/documentation.html, I encourage you to look at them, starting by starting.wmv then cpp_example.wmv for instance, but you can also look at the others because the rules are quite identicals. These video tutorials are old and many features was added since I made them, but this is a good start.
You cannot drag&drop from browser to no where (I mean not into an opened diagram) nor when the element cannot be added in a diagram
I'm trying to design a desktop UI for schematics, layout, drawing stuff. Just looking for high level advice from actual software designers.
Assuming an in-memory "database", (clojure map of arbitrary depth for all user data, and possibly another one for application preferences, etc.), I'm examining how to do the model-view-controller thing on these, where the data may be rendered and modified by any one or more of:
A standalone text field that shows a single parameter, such as box width.
An "inspector" type of view that shows multiple parameters of a selected object, such as box width, height, color, checkboxes, etc.
A table/spreadsheet type of view that shows multiple parameters of multiple objects, potentially the whole database
A graphical rendering of the whole thing, such as both schematic and layout view.
Modifying any one of these should show up immediately in every other active view, both text and graphical, not after clicking "ok"... so no modal boxes allowed. If for some reason the table view, an inspector view, and a graphical rendering are all in view, dragging the corner of the box graphically should immediately show up in the text, etc.
The platform in question is JavaFX, but I'd like a clean separation between UI and everything else, so I want to avoid binding in the JFX sense, as that ties my design data very tightly to JFX Properties, increases the graininess of the model, and forces me to work outside the standard clojure functions for dealing with data, and/or deal heavily with the whole getValue/setValue world.
I'm still assuming at least some statefulness/mutability, and the use of built-in Clojure functionality such as the ability to add-watch on an atom/var/ref and let the runtime signal dependent functions.
Platform-specific interaction will rest tightly with the actual UI, such as reifying ActionListeners, and dealing with ObservableValues etc., and will attempt to minimize the reliance on things like JavaFX Property for actual application data. I'm not entertaining FRP for this.
I don't mind extending JFX interfaces or making up my own protocols to use application-specific defrecords, but I'd prefer for the application data to remain as straight Clojure data, unsullied by the platform.
The question is how to set this all up, with closest adherence to the immutable model. I see a few options:
Fine-grain: Each parameter value/primitive (ie Long, Double, Boolean, or String) is an atom, and each view which can modify the value "reaches in" as far as it needs to in the database to change the value. This could suck as there could potentially be thousands of individual values (for example points on a hand-drawn curve), and will require lots of (deref...) junk. I believe this is how JFX would want to do this, with giant arrays of Properties at the leaf nodes, etc., which feels bloated. With this approach it doesn't seem much better than just coding it up in Java/C++.
Medium-grain: Each object/record in the database is an atom of a Clojure map. The entire map is replaced when any one of its values changes. Fewer total atoms to deal with, and allows for example long arrays of straight-up numbers for various things. But this gets complicated when some objects in the database require more nesting than others.
Coarse-grain: There is just one atom: the database. Any time anything changes, the entire database is replaced, and every view needs to re-render its particular portion. This feels a bit like using a hammer to swat a fly, and a naive implementation would require everything to re-render all the time. But I still think this is the best trade off, as any primitive has a clear access path from the root node, whether it is accessed on a per-primitive level or per-record level.
I also need the ability for one data template to be instantiated many times. So for example if the user changes a symbol or shape which is used in multiple places, a single edit will apply everywhere. I believe this also requires some type of "pointer"-like behavior. I think I can store a atom to the model, then instantiate as needed, and it can work in any of the above grain models.
Any other approaches? Is trying to do a GUI editor-like tool in a functional language just stupid?
Thanks
I don't think is stupid to use a functional language to do a GUI editor-like tool. But I can't claim to have an answer to your question. Here are some links that might help you in your journey:
Stuart Sierra - Components Just Enough Structure
Chris Granger - Light Table: Explains how Light Table (source) is structured.
Chris Granger - The IDE as a Value: blog post related to the video above
Conal Elliott - Tangible Functional Programming: Using Functional Reactive Programming to create a composable UI, but his code is in Haskell.
Nathan Herzing & Chris Shea - Helping voters with Pedestal, Datomic, Om and core.async
David Nolen - Comparative Literate Programming: Shows all to use core.async to simplify UI programming in ClojureScript. The ideas here can be used in a desktop UI.
Rich Hickey - The Language of the System: Amazing talk about system programming by the creator of Clojure.
Erik Meijer has a good quote about functional vs imperative code:
...no matter whether it's Haskell, C# Java, F#, Scala, Python, PHP think about the idea of having a sea of imperative code that interacts with the outside world and in there have islands of pure code where you write your functions in a pure way.
But you have to decide how big the islands are and how big the sea is. But the answer is never that there are only islands or only sea. A good programmer knows exactly the right balance.
I am not fluent in UML, but I would like to create a class diagram based on existing C++ code. Other StackOverflow questions have indicated that two programs - Enterprise Architect and Rational Software Architect - are fairly good at "reverse engineering" C++ code (i.e., creating UML class diagrams based on existing C++ code).
I have downloaded the trial version for both of these applications. However, I cannot make any headway into understanding what to do to create a class diagram in either of these applications.
In Rational Software Architect, I have created a UML project, but I cannot find any way within the program to select, and reverse engineer, my existing C++ code.
In Enterprise Architect, I was able to import my C++ code, but all the elements (classes) appeared in a useless, overlapping diagonal line within the diagram. I attempted other settings, such as circle, but these were equally impossible to read because the diagrams were so large (due to the attributes and methods taking up alot of space) that no amount of panning and zooming was useful. What I would like is to hide everything except the class names (i.e., not display any methods or attributes) so that all 20 classes appear conveniently and legibly in one screen.
However, I am unable to find a way to hide everything except the class names. Rather, when I found an option (in Enterprise Architect) that seemed like it might hide everything but the class names, for some reason the elements all vanished in the class diagram, and no amount of repeating the steps & deleting and re-adding packages made the class diagram reappear.
Note: My C++ code (at least those files I selected for import into Enterprise Architect) amount to only about 20 classes.
Sadly, a very careful search of the documentation for both of these programs provides only generalities - no specific instructions are given regarding reverse engineering for either of these programs, so far as I could find.
I would be grateful if someone could tell me the basic steps to create a legible, easy-to-navigate diagram via. reverse engineering (i.e., C++-to-UML) that shows only the class names, so that about 20 classes fit (legibly) on one screen, using either Enterprise Architect, or Rational Software Architect - OR any other tool whatsoever that is capable of doing this (I suggest EA and Rational only because they have been highlighted in other StackOverflow answers as the best programs available for this purpose).
This answer applies to EA.
You can import individual files or whole directories, recursively or no. Directory import is by far the most common case; single file import does not allow you to create a diagram automatically.
When you import a source directory, you have the option of creating diagrams for each UML package, or no diagrams at all. You also decide whether to create packages for each source code directory, namespace (default) or file.
If your code constists of only 20 classes then it's likely they're in a single directory and/or namespace, so play around with that option (Package Structure in the Import Source dialog) to get the right number of diagrams.
In the same dialog, there's a button "New Diagram Options," which opens another config dialog where you can choose whether the diagrams should contain the classes' attributes and/or operations. You can also make the decision on a visibility basis, eg show public members only.
This dialog only affects what's shown in the diagrams when they are created. The members are still imported, just not displayed. This sounds like what you're after.
You can change the display options for any diagram by double-clicking an empty area of it, or right-clicking and selecting Properties. It sounds like you got into this dialog and changed something around, but I can't really tell what. The situation you describe, where you can't get the display back the way it was, is not one I've ever encountered in EA.
It is also possible to select display options on a per-class basis by right-clicking it in the diagram and selecting Feature Visibility. I don't recommend you use this in reverse-engineered diagrams, I'm just mentioning it for completeness.
The layout you describe, with all classes in a meaningless diagonal, suggests to me that the diagram isn't being laid out properly after creation. The diagram creation is a two-step process; first all the classes are dropped onto it, then the layout is applied.
This is strange, as EA automatically lays out generated diagrams and I haven't been able to find an option which allows you to deselect this behaviour. If this persists, send a bug report to Sparx Systems. You can always lay out the diagram by opening it and selecting Layout Diagram from the top-level Diagram menu.
If, finally, your classes are spread out among different packages and namespaces so that EA generates multiple diagrams for them, you'll have to merge them manually. Do this by opening both diagrams, selecting all (Ctrl-A) in one, copying (Ctrl-C) and pasting (Ctrl-V) into the other, then ask EA to Layout Diagram again.
So:
Right-click an empty package in the project browser, select Code Engineering - Import Source Directory.
In the dialog, select the root directory and source type.
Tick "Create Logical Diagram for Each Package" and select the Package Structure which best fits your source structure.
Click "New Diagram Options" and in the new dialog untick "Show Attributes," "Show Operations" and "Show Property Methods" if applicable.
OK both dialogs.
If multiple diagrams have been created, copy all classes into a single diagram.
If the layout looks bad, select Diagram - Layout Diagram.
Hope this helps.
I'm developing a web portal that mostly works like a newspaper site. In the focus, there are articles, containing text, videos and images. These articles have attachments which shall be presented in a sidebar. These attachments might be the same objects that will be displayed within the body text.
I have been thinking a lot about how to create the structure and - and this is a major point - how to enable the editor to edit all this stuff comfortably.
What I evaluated were Django-CMS and feincms as complete systems, and several third-party-modules that do snippets of the work.
Now, I a have solution for inline objects: I forked the inline-module of django-basic-apps which is now able to take additional parameters for the objects to embed. Their parameters are an important thing to e.g. embed "an image with object id x, but max x pixels in size".
What is not solved with my approach is, to generate a sidebar containing a bunch of inline tokens. I could create a custom widget for this, though. A better solution would surely be to add a functionaly like somehow attaching generic objects (videos, images...) to an article object.
While my solution is working so far, I'm not sure if there are other ways to solve these common scenario, and I would like to hear some other experiences about this topic, and if there are any other ways you deal with it.
For there does not seem to be a bigger need of a solution for this generic problem, I will use my solution and see whether it proves in practice.
Take a look at Armstrong CMS. It's specifically designed to meet the needs of news organizations. It was developed out of the code that powers The Texas Tribune, a very large Django news site that won the Edward R. Murrow Award for best local news website in 2010.
Armstrong scales very well, is fast and can handle just about any kind of content you want to throw at it.
A sort of follow up/related question to this.
I'm trying to get a grip on a large code base that has hundreds and hundreds of classes and a large inheritance hierarchy. I want to be able to see the "main veins" of the inheritance hierarchy at a glance - not all the "peripheral" classes that only do some very specific / specialized thing. Visual Studio's "View Class Diagram" makes something that looks like a train and its sprawled horizontally across the screen and isn't very organized. You can't grok it easily.
I've just tried doxygen and graphviz but the results are .. somewhat similar to Visual Studio. I'm getting sweet looking call graphs but again too much detail for what I'm trying to get.
I need a quick way to generate the inheritance hierarchy, in some kind of collapsible view.
Why not just do it manually, it is a great learning experience when starting to work with a large code base. I usually just look at what class inherits from what, and what class contain what instances, references or pointers to other classes. Have a piece of paper next to you and get drawing...
Instead of going into the full Class Designer tool, just use the "Class View" or the "Object Browser" in Visual Studio - they present fully collapsible class heirarchies.
A good UML tool should do the trick.
Here is a list of generic UMl tools: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UML_tools
There are lots out there, all with varying feature sets. Try playing with a few to see if you get the output you desire. If they free ones fail you, you might have to shell out for a good commercial grade UML tool
You can try CppDepend, it doesn't create a class hierarchy like Doxygen does but it can show 'the big picture' for your project, it also shows some code metrics.
I've had most success with valgrind and kcachegrind to do this. You run valgrind against your debugging binary, perform whatever actions your interested in, then import the output into kcachegrind to see everything you'd ever want to know about who called what, how often, and when. Plus, because your doing it dynamically, it catches cases that static analysis likely wont.
I've also had some success using Enterprise Architect's reverse engineering features, although this doesn't end up nearly as nicely (but you get a workable UML model which is nice!).
And finally, a tool called "Understand". This is pretty good at static OO analysis, but I think quite pricey and not that widely used.
Try Source Insight it is possible to configure the depth of the generated graph in this tool.
See also C/C++ call-graph utility for Windows platform
Check out SourceNavigator, it's open source, works on a bunch of platforms and has a Hierarchy Browser, a Class Browser, a Cross-Reference Browser and more that will allow you navigate and understand the code.
I'm using it for some time now especially when I have new code to go through and understand.
For a reasonably priced commercial product, you may want to check out SolidSX from Vizlogix (www.vizlogix.com). (If you are outside of North America, go to SolidSource -- www.solidsourceit.com.)
It generates a radial diagram that can be collapsed and expanded. It also integrates with Visual Studio (both BSC and .NET).
What's your definition of 'main vein'? You either want a graph reducer or skeletizer (you could find or write one and apply it to what Doxygen and the rest produce) or, 'main vein' has something to do with the function of the code and, I don't think an automated tool can help you with that. Unless you can point out to it 'These are the important bits that do input and output, show me only elements that are one or two steps away from the paths between these'. Hum, sounds like a cool tool to write :)
... the inheritance hierarchy, in some kind of collapsible view.
again, a sweet idea for a tool!