Chapter 1: Getting Started

• Welcome
• What is a CASE Tool?
• What You Can Do with UMLStudio
• Installing UMLStudio
• Creating a Simple Project
• Viewing an Existing Project

Welcome

Please take a moment to read the License Agreement, if you haven’t done so already.

If you’re using the freeware version of UMLStudio, you can upgrade it to a licensed version by paying the License Fee. We will then provide you with a valid Serial Number and Key Code which will remove the save restriction of the freeware version. By doing so, you will qualify for Product Support.

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please contact Pragsoft Corporation via email: help@pragsoft.com.

We continually enhance UMLStudio and make new releases. Please visit our web site, www.pragsoft.com, to download new releases as they become available. Licensed users and those who join our email list will be automatically informed via email of new releases.

What is a CASE Tool?

So rather than describing a software system in text, pictures are used to express the system at various levels of abstraction. The level of formality of these pictures can range from totally informal to a formally-specified graphical language. The advantage of formal graphical notations is that they can be analysed by the CASE tool and useful textual information (e.g., program code) automatically generated from them. Informal notations, on the other hand, have the advantage of not being as much constrained in their syntax and hence completely open to the user’s interpretation and needs.

A CASE tool typically provides the following capabilities:

• One or more diagram editors for creating diagrams in notations supported by the CASE tool.

• Validation features so that diagrams can be analysed for syntactic (and sometimes limited semantic) correctness.

• Code generators for automatically generating skeleton program code from the diagrams.

• Document generators for automatically creating formatted text documents from the diagrams.

• Reverse engineering facilities for converting program code back into graphical models.

• A repository in which the diagrams and their attributes are stored for later retrieval.

Based on their notations, CASE tools support specific analysis and design methods. Earlier generation of CASE tools supported Structured Analysis and Design methods. These methods are now largely obsolete and are replaced by Object-Oriented Analysis and Design methods, which are in turn supported by the more recent CASE tools.

What You Can Do with UMLStudio

Because notations are defined visually, you do not need any specialized skills to define them. With UMLStudio, you can define and start using a new notation in a matter of minutes.

Unlike most other CASE tools, UMLStudio’s graphical notations are not hard-coded into it. Instead, each notation is stored in a notation template file. These templates are analogous to Microsoft Word document templates. (By creating a Microsoft Word template you can define a unique document style. This template can then be used to create documents that share the specified style. If you ever decide to adjust the style, you simply modify the template and the change can be automatically applied to the documents that use it.)

Similarly, a notation template in UMLStudio can be used to create diagrams that conform to that notation. You can adjust the notation at any point in time by modifying the template, and all the diagrams that are based on that notation will change automatically. Like in Word, you can also apply a different template to your drawings to instantly transform them into a different notation. For example, you can create a Booch class diagram and then automatically transform it to UML or some other OO notation.

By using templates, UMLStudio makes it easy to design new notations and share them with others. Most CASE users often face the problem of confronting a problem for which they have no appropriate notation. With UMLStudio, you’re never limited. If the task is best served by designing a completely new notation to address it, then you can do so quickly and consistently.

UMLStudio also provides the necessary tools for creating arbitrary and informal diagrams and to link and mix these with your formal diagrams. UMLStudio’s advanced grouping feature allows you to create arbitrarily complex objects of your own design and to formalize these objects as you see fit. You can put your designs in a library and make them available for quick reuse via the library menu.

In UMLStudio, we usually use the term model instead of a diagram or a drawing. A model is an abstraction of a concept. For example, a design model is an abstract representation of a design idea. Models are represented as drawings. For example, a software design model may be represented by a class diagram.

We also use the terms object (or entity) to refer to the logical components of a model, and the term drawable to refer to the visible representation of an object in a model’s drawing. However, these terms are also used interchangeably, but the intent will be clear from the context.

The following is a summary of UMLStudio’s key features:

• You can create document-based projects. A project can hold an unlimited number of models.

• Each project conforms to a notation template. The latter can be modified or completely replaced by another template at any point in time.

• You can create your own notation templates and then use these for creating your projects.

• A set of predefined templates of popular notations are provided for your convenience.

• Using UMLServer, you can share projects within a group of UMLStudio users, so that multiple users can work on the same project simultaneously. UMLServer automatically version controls such projects.

• You can print the information contained by a project (or a template) in both graphical and textual formats.

• You can copy and paste freely between the models in a project as well as across projects. You can also copy a model (or part of it) and paste it into other Windows applications (e.g., into Word documents) as graphics.

• You can view and edit the properties associated with an object in a model.

• You can search and replace arbitrary strings in your projects.

• You can zoom in and out of models.

• You can control the size of a model and its layout across pages.

• You can explode an object in a model to define a submodel for it. In this way you can grow your project as a hierarchy of models and submodels with unlimited depth.

• You can re-arrange the objects in a drawing in various ways.

• You can group objects to build progressively more complex objects that can be treated as single objects.

• You can create your own libraries of symbols and design patterns, and share them with others. These libraries can be loaded into UMLStudio so that they can be used for creating diagrams.

• You can control the appearance of objects in your models (e.g., their color, font, line style, etc.).

• You can generate program code and documentation for any portion of your project.

• You can reverse engineer your existing program code into object models.

• You can customize the scripts that drive the document/code generation processes to fit your own purposes, or you can write new scripts to do whatever you want (e.g., generate code in another language, generate reports).

Installing UMLStudio

UMLStudio has very modest memory and disk space requirements. If you have sufficient memory for Windows to operate comfortably, then this will be more than adequate for UMLStudio.

To install UMLStudio on your PC, run the installation executable, and follow the Setup instruction steps.

Creating a Simple Project

The objective of this exercise is to create a model of the workers in a hypothetical company. This model consist of two classes:

• The Employee class is a generalization of all company employees.

• The Manager class is a specialization of the Employee class to represent employees who are in managerial positions.

Employee will have the following attributes and methods:

Attributes:	name : String
	hireDate : Date
Methods:	Terminate (date : Date) : void
	DaysInService () : Integer

To create the project:

Run UMLStudio by double-clicking its icon in an Explorer Window or by choosing it from the Windows Start:Programs submenu.

The UMLStudio main window will appear on the screen and it will contain a blank project document, named Untitled. We will use the UML notation for this exercise. If the current template is not UML.not, choose File:Switch To Template, and then double-click the UML.not template.

Click on the icon of the Untitled model in the explorer pane to select it.

Selecting the model causes its drawing to be displayed in the drawing pane to the right of the window. However, since this model is blank, the drawing is empty. You can now populate the model by creating objects in it. We will now create the Employee and Manager classes and their relationships.

Click on the Class tool in the custom toolbar to select it.

If you now move the mouse pointer to the drawing pane, the mouse pointer will change to a different cursor. This means that clicking the mouse will create a place object of the type selected (i.e., a class). Position the pointer where you want the center of the class to be positioned.

Click the mouse button.

This causes a class to be created. The class will be initially named "?" to indicate that it has just been created and needs to be named appropriately.

As soon as you create the place, the pointer tool will be selected in the main toolbar and the mouse pointer will revert to the usual shape.

When you create an object, it is always automatically selected. For a place object, this is indicated by 4 black knobs positioned at the corners of an imaginary rectangle enclosing the object. Selecting an object is a very useful and common operation, because in order to edit an object in any way, it needs to be selected first.

We want to edit the place we just created by giving it a different name. If you place the mouse pointer over the object, you will notice that the pointer changes to an I-bar cursor. This indicates that what’s under the cursor is editable text.

Click the mouse while positioned over the class text.

This causes the single character "?" inside the class to be selected. The class object itself is said to be activated. This simply means that the object text is in an editable mode.

Type "Employee".

This causes the class name to be changed to "Employee".

Click outside the object.

This causes the object to be deactivated and deselected at the same time. When an object is deactivated, it is no longer affected by typing on the keyboard.

You will notice that as soon as you deselect the class, it is automatically resized to fit around the text.

The first step in creating the Employee class is now complete. Follow the same steps to also create the Manager class.

Note how the two classes created also appear in the lister page of the info pane. Each place has an associated master that defines the object denoted by the place. The lister provides a list of all masters you create in your project.

Our next task is to create the inheritance relationship between Manager and Employee.

Click on the Inheritance tool in the custom toolbar to select it.

If you now move the mouse pointer to the drawing pane, the mouse pointer will change to a cross cursor. This means that clicking and dragging the mouse will create a link object of the type selected. A link always connects a source place to a destination place.

Position the mouse pointer on the Manager class, hold the mouse button down, and drag (don’t release the mouse button yet).

When you place the pointer on the class, it changes to a cross cursor with outward arrows. This means that this class will become the source of the link. As you drag, you will see the link created and following the mouse movement.

Drag until the pointer is positioned over the Employee class and release the mouse button.

When you position the pointer on the Employee class, the pointer changes to a cross cursor with inward arrows. This means that this class will become the destination of the link. The link is established between the two classes as soon as you release the mouse button.

As before, the link is initially selected. This is indicated by two knobs at the start and end of the link. Clicking outside the link will deselect it.

The diagram created so far should look like this:

We will now create the aggregation relationship between Employee and Manager. To avoid this link overlapping the previous one, we will create it with two intermediate points.

Click on the Bi-Aggregation tool in the custom toolbar to select it.

Place the mouse pointer on the Employee class, hold the mouse button down, and drag to a point outside the right of the class and release the mouse button.

The link is partially created up to the point you have clicked. Now if you continue moving the mouse, you will see the next leg of the link. Move down and click to create the next leg of the link.

Finally, move the pointer over the Manager class and click the mouse button.

This completes the link and selects it.

The selected link has a knob at its start, at its end, and at its intermediate points. Additionally, there is a knob at the bottom-right corner of an invisible text box that represents the area where the link label (if any) will appear.

Click on the link text box and type "reports to".

The text appears in the box. As soon as you deselect the link, the link’s text box is automatically resized to fit around the text.

Double-click the link you just created.

This is a shortcut to selecting the link and choosing Edit:Properties. It causes the link property sheet to be displayed. The property sheet allows you to define the link properties. For the moment, the only thing we want to add is the cardinality of the link, which should be n to 1.

After entering the cardinality and pressing the OK button, your diagram will look like this:

The only thing left to do is defining the attributes and methods of the Employee class. We can do this using the class property sheet.

Double click the Employee class.

Because Employee is a place, its property sheet has four tab pages: a General page (similar to the one for a link), an Attributes page, a Methods page, and an Exceptions page.

Click on the Attributes tab to select it.

Enter the name and type of the first attribute and press the Add button. Repeat this for the remaining attribute.

Click on the Methods tab to select it.

Enter the name and return type of the first method. Press the Edit Parameters button and enter the name and type of the method parameter in the dialog displayed and press the Add button.

Press OK to close the parameters dialog, and press Add to add the method to the list of methods. Repeat this for the next method. Press OK to confirm your changes to the property sheet and to close it.

As soon as the property sheet of the class is closed, the class is resized to show the added attributes and methods. You may need to adjust the other objects around the place to cater for the increased size of the place.

Your diagram should now look like this:

Choose File:Save As to save your project.

A dialog box is displayed for you to specify the name and location of your project. Enter these as desired and press the Save button.

This completes our simple exercise.

Viewing an Existing Project

\UMLStudio\Projects\

If you’re a new user, it’s a good idea to have a look at these projects and to explore the models inside them.

You can open a project in two ways:

• Locate the project using the Windows Explorer and double-click its icon, or

• Choose File:Open in UMLStudio, browse to the project file, select it, and press the Open button.

Click on the various models in the explorer pane of the project to view them.