UML tools for .net

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935main

Has anyone else noticed the same thing that I have noticed, that it's
very difficult to find a good free UML tool for .net? There are
handfulls of them for Java, but .net? VP has one integrated with
vs.net but for code generation they want like $800 -- what's so
different about java and java developers that they can have code
generating / reverse engineering uml tools for free and .net developers
don't?

I'm very much looking forward to the class designer in vs 2005, but
even when it comes out it might be a bit expensive for me.

Any ideas? Anyone know of a free code generating / reverse engineering
tool for .net?

thanks
 
Has anyone else noticed the same thing that I have noticed, that it's
very difficult to find a good free UML tool for .net? There are
handfulls of them for Java, but .net? VP has one integrated with
vs.net but for code generation they want like $800 -- what's so
different about java and java developers that they can have code
generating / reverse engineering uml tools for free and .net developers
don't?
Click to expand...

There is a bit of a philosophical issue here. The proper relationship
between UML class diagrams and, say C#, is something about which people
disagree. Some feel that UML is more of a whiteboarding, and documentation
tool for modeling the problem domain. If you try to use UML to capture all
the detail and solve all the problems which will need to be addressed in the
C# implementation then the UML will fail to be a usable high-level domain
model. If you use UML correctly to model your problem domain, then forward
engineering it into C# leaves out too many low-level design desicions. To
one of that mind, putting a code generator on a UML tool just encourages
misuse of UML as a low-level design tool, instead of a high-level domain
modeling tool.

Plus in .NET enterprise applications, the C# code is only a part of the
design. Today with a .NET enterprise applcation you may have design
artifacts in UML docs, C# class designs, XML Schemas (for WS-*), and
relational databases. Automating UML<-->C#, even assuming it worked
perfectly, still leaves a lot of work to do. For instance, how is the
relational schema designed? Even if UML-->C# works well, is
UML-->C#-->RDBMS going to work well? Probably not, and I'd rather have
automated forward and reverse engineering between C# and my RDBMS than
between UML and C#.

David
 
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