Chapter 1: Getting Started

• Welcome
• What is UMLServer?
• What You Can Do with UMLServer
• Installing UMLServer

Welcome

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

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

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

What is a UMLServer?

• A limited number of UMLStudio licenses to be shared by a larger group of users.

• Multiple users to concurrently work on the same project.

As a UMLStudio user, you can either work in stand-alone mode or in shared mode.

To work in stand-alone mode you don't need UMLServer. This mode is suitable for small teams, where no more than a handful of people work on the same UML project. To preserve the integrity of the project, care must be taken to ensure that no two individuals edit the same poject concurrently. This can be enforced through the use of a third-party version control software (e.g., SourceSafe) whereby a UMLStudio project is locked while being edited by an individual so that no other user can make changes to it. If the whole team is in one place (e.g., the same open area) then this is manageable, as the project members can communicate verbally and directly to ensure timely access to the UML project.

In larger projects, the stand-alone mode can turn into a bottle-neck and slow down the modelling effort. UMLServer overcomes this problem by allowing UMLStudio users shared access to the same project. This approach is somewhat similar to that used by Version Control tools, except that there is no locking involved. Two or more users can concurrently work on the same project. To do this, each user gets a copy of the project from the UMLServer repository and edits that copy. When a user checks in their edited copy of that project, UMLServer merges the changes made by that user with the ones made by other users who have already checked-in their copies.

UMLServer maintains version information for each user's modifications to a project, so that all earlier versions can be retrieved.

What You Can Do with UMLServer

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

• You can share a limited number of UMLStudio licenses in a larger group. To do this, you should set each installed UMLStudio's license to be floating and have it point to a UMLServer installation. As each user launches a UMLStudio session, UMLStudio contact UMLServer to verify the license details. Access is granted so long as the maximum number of users supported by that license is not exceeded.

• You can limit access to UMLServer by configuring its user access profile. For example, you can limit access by specifying any combination of user IDs, machines, and passwords that should be granted access. You can give users permissions to check-in, check-out, create, and delete files/folders in the repository.

• You can view information about users who are connected to the server, and manually remove them if necessary.

• You can create a hierarchical repository of version-controlled UMLStudio projects, which consists of folders, sub-folders, projects, and project versions.

• You can create (and delete) a folder in the repository for holding projects.

• You can create a new project in the repository by simply checking it in for the first time.

• You can check-out any version of a project in the repository, without locking out other users.

• You can merge your changes to a project with changes made by other users. This happens automatically when you check in a project version.

• You can access UMLServer over any TCP/IP connection. For example, if you have UMLServer installed on a LAN at work, you can access it over that LAN while you're at work, or using a dial up model at home, or using the Internet across the globe.

Installing UMLServer

UMLServer 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 UMLServer.

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

If you intend to use the repository feature of UMLServer, you must also install a compatible copy of UMLStudio on the same box (UMLServer will need this to merge projects in the repository).