Comprehensive Study on UML Tools

H. Eichelberger, K. Schmid, Y. Eldogan: A comprehensive analysis of UML tools, their capabilities and their compliance

Objective

This study evaluates current UML modeling tools including the products of all major players being relevant to industry and academia. The study is meant to provide an overview of UML modeling tools as well as decision support to potential buyers and users.

Vendors

As part of this study, we identified approximately 200 tools claiming UML modeling functionality, out of which 68 were analyzed thoroughly. The remaining 132 tools were not considered for evaluation due to technical reasons, e.g. the vendor or the tool do not exist anymore, the tool cannot be installed or no maintenance was done for the particular tool since the first version of UML 2 was published. In this report only the result of 64 tools could be reported, as the licensing terms of four tools prohibited publication and we could not achieve (so far) an agreement with the tool providers. The list of all tools evaluated can be found in the index of the study.

Contact

Dr. Holger Eichelberger

Summary

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been widely adopted in software engineering practice in industry over the last decade. However, due to the complexity of the UML specification it is very difficult for a single tool to support the full range of UML standards faithfully. In practice tools differ significantly in terms of the parts of the UML specification they support.

The decision of a development organization for a specific tool environment is a very momentous one, which typically leads to a significant amount of costs (e.g., in terms of training), out of which the licensing costs, though significant, are often only a minor part. Thus, the tool needs to be chosen with very much care. As one aid towards a rational tool selection decision, this report provides the most comprehensive comparison of UML tools currently available. The report combines a detailed information collection effort for each individual tool, a broad range of tools analyzed and also analyzed UML compliance as defined by the OMG.

The focus of this study is on the availability of the modeling capabilities as defined in the UML specifcation. This has been evaluated in a very comprehensive and detailed way for all UML modeling tools that we found currently to be available and which are still supported. As a basis for the evaluation, the UML specification was decomposed into 476 features, each of which was individually evaluated for each of the tools. A detailed breakdown that relates for each identified tool its capabilities to the diagram features defined by the UML enables a fast analysis regarding the applicability of a tool for a specific development context. As part of our analysis, we also characterize the tools in terms of their UML standard compliance, a tool characterization schema defined by the OMG.

Key points

Comprehensive evaluation of 68 UML modeling tools
Detailed analysis of each tool according to modeling capabilities derived from the UML specification
Categorization of the results in terms of the UML standard compliance mechanism
Study report with 179 full color A4 pages with more than 80 figures, tables and screenshots on the aggregated results

Further Information

The report is available as a package which consists of

the printed study report as a hard cover book
an online access to the evaluation details of each tool
updates of the evaluation results for one year since purcase

The price of the package is 299 EUR including VAT. Special pricing for non-profit organizations is available.

Ordering

In order to purchase the study, please contact Dr. Holger Eichelberger to obtain a request form.

Sample Sections

The documents listed below provide an insight into the study report

Publications

H. Eichelberger, Y. Eldogan, K. Schmid, A Comprehensive Survey of UML Compliance in Current Modelling Tools, SE 2009, LNI 143, Kaiserslautern, 2009, p. 39-50
H. Eichelberger, Y. Eldogan, K. Schmid, How much UML is in my UML tool? An Overview, accepted for SEISCONF 2009