Sunday, August 2, 2009

yUML - Awesome Web 2.0 UML Generator


Quick and easy UML! (http://www.yuml.me/) Too often I find myself trying to read UML 'chicken scratch' hand written by others or even myself with not much luck. An amazing Web 2.0 tool exists to help with just such a problem. It is called yUML and is a free on-line tool that allows users to generate UML diagrams as simple as the one above to much more complicated diagrams. The tool requires a special syntax that is relatively intuitive for UML users. A complete set of examples and syntactical help exists on the website. The syntax to create the diagram above is:

[Company]++-1>[Location]
This syntax can either be entered directly into the yUML interactive window or through an URL which simply returns the image file such as: http://yuml.me/diagram/scruffy/class/[Company]++-1>[Location]

You will notice that the image has a 'scruffy' hand written look to it. The tool also offers a much more professional look and feel as well by simply removing 'scruffy' from the URL, such as: http://yuml.me/diagram/class/[Company]++-1>[Location]

yUML lets the user create class diagrams as well as use case diagrams such as the one below:

I am so impressed with this tool that it will become a required tool for the students in my CSIS 321 - Software Engineering course this fall. I will NEVER again accept hand written UML diagrams as part of any project specification.

The ability of this tool to embed diagrams into other documents, webpages, etc. creates an environment for collaborative discussions about project designs and implementations that is platform independent and does not rely on a proprietary software package for diagraming.

3 comments:

  1. Hey Brent

    Thanks for the write-up, and compliments :) Your use-case is exactly the kind of thing I'd like to see yUML used for :) Feel free to send feedback (I know yUML has some rough edges that need smoothing out, excuse the pun).

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  2. I will me trying this for my Engineering class.

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  3. Excellent tool! I'll recommend it for class use.

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