Re: Umbrello and XMI

On Fri, Apr 09, 2004 at 04:02:14PM +0000, Anna Persson  wrote:

> 1)Is there any plans to support newer versions of XMI (like 2.0) in Umbrello?

We would like to support XMI as the standard for UML as XML but it is
a very complex standard (and XMI 2.0 will probably be even more
complex) and I havn't found any guide which makes it easy to follow.
So we don't follow the standard very well and are unlikely to support
2.0 once it comes out.

> 2)Do you think it is critical that Umbrello can be integrated (can exchange information) with other modelling 
> tools?

It would be very nice if it did but at the moment that just isn't very
possible, we don't have the people power to make it happen.

> 3)Some modelling tools doesn't support ?general? import/export of XMI files. Instead they support import of XMI 
> files from a number of specific tools and they export XMI files for specific tools (eg. Rose XMI) . Is there any 
> plans to suppport tool specific XMI import/export in Umbrello as a complement to the current ?general? 
> approach?

Same as above.  And I wouldn't look too favourably on supposrting
proprietry extentions to standards.

> 4)XMI is an ?open? standard that can be ?adjusted? by tool developers implementing it. This means that 
> interchange of XMI information between two modelling tools may not work, despite that the two tools supports 
> the same version of XMI. Do you think that XMI as on open standard currently is succesful? Or does the XMI 
> standard have to be ?less open? in order to actually work?

It doesn't seem to be very sucessful in that all UML tools supposrt it
differently.  

> 5)Many modelling tools can just handle one specific version of XMI, which limits the number of XMI files that can 
> be imported in the tools. Why is it like this? Is it hard to support several versions of XMI in the same tool? Or is 
> the tool developers more interested in the export function rather than the import function?

It's hard to support one version of XMI never mind follow other implementations.

> 6)My study has shown that exchange of XMI information between modelling tools are really troublesome and I 
> know that others have experienced the same problems. Are these problems related to insufficiences in the XMI 
> standard or to insufficiences in the tools? Or both?

Possibly to insufficiences in XMI and certainly to the complexity of
the standard.

> 7)What do you think about the future of XMI? 

XMI 2.0 will mix SVG with XMI I believe?  SVG is horrendously complex,
I havn't seen a complete implementation of it yet, same with XMI.
Putting them together sounds like a nice idea but it won't be simple
to implement.

> 8)Are there any alternatives to XMI (apart from solutions based on repository technologies)?

http://www.yy.ics.keio.ac.jp/~suzuki/project/uxf/

I havn't look at it at all.

> 9)Is there an  interest in information exchange between tools from users of modelling tools?

Yes, only yesterday a developer was saying he'd done some UML diagrams
and then been told he was using the wrong tool.  A standard file
format would be great.

Jonathan Riddell


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