Improved SDE for Eclipse

With our new release, SDE for Eclipse (SDE-EC) has been greatly improved to make it easier to use both in diagramming and collaboratiing through the VP Teamwork Server, CVS and Subversion. Improvements include automatic starting or switching VP project when opening the diagram editor, remembering opened diagrams and tree states between sessions, easy switching between modeling and coding perspectives, as well as providing complete support for Java 5.0, allowing for more stable visual refactoring and improved performance.

New Diagram Directly from Menu

Traditionally, to open a new diagram you first have to right-click on a type of diagram in the diagram navigator pane and select New Use Case Diagram.

Now you can create a new diagram by simply selecting File > New > New Diagram, and choose

Select the type of diagram you want to create and type in the name for the new diagram.

Automatic Project Switch

When working in Eclipse it is very likely that you will have several Java projects within a workspace. Each Java project can have it's own UML project, and you may need to read or manipulate diagrams from different projects and the same time.

Here you can see that the 'Initial Use Case Model' diagram belongs to the 'Design' project (shown in the Diagram Navigator pane) while the 'Domain Model' diagram is stored in the 'Implementation' project.

When you activate a diagram editor, the project where that diagram is stored will automatically open in the diagram navigator pane. The project has switched from 'Design' to 'Implementation'.

Keeping Opened Diagrams

An opened diagram will stay open even if you restart the application. Below, the 'Domain Model' diagram is open. We can test this feature by exiting the application.

Open Eclipse again.

The diagram we left open is still open after restarting the application

Remembering Tree States

There are several panes in the Graphical User Interface. Each one of them provides a specific functionality that aids you in creating and working on a project. The application will remember all the nodes in a tree you have selected and opened (or left closed). Let's open a diagram from the navigator pane and select two nodes in the model pane.

The 'Class Diagram 1' on the left is a selected node, while the '_order : Order' and '_product : Product' are opened nodes.

Let's see what happens when we close and restart the application. Exit the application now. The tree states will be kept until we open the application again. It will also be remembered after committing a project.

Open the application again.

The project you were last working on is opened automatically. The nodes you selected before exiting the application will be shown when Eclipse is reopened.

Switching Perspectives

Perspectives define the initial set and layout of views in the user interface. Switching between perspectives allow you to work with views for a particular purpose, for example the UML Modeling perspective lets you work on visual modeling while in the Java perspective panes views for coding will appear foremost instead of diagrams and modeling views. You can now switch perspectives with just a quick click of your mouse.

This is the UML Modeling perspective.

Perspectives can be switched by simply clicking on the buttom on the right hand side of the toolbar.

The perspective has changed the layout of the panes to show the java files.

Click on a node to edit the file in a new pane.

Improved Teamwork Project Usability

Teamwork project allows a team of people to work separately on different parts of the same project and then combine and merge them together through the teamwork server. Visual Paradigm has improved on this by adding Subversion and CVS repository integration. This means you can now keep your designs and codes in the same repository, as well as share designs among your team much more easily, with no delays.

Lets assume this is User A who is responsible for modifying the diagram below.

User A has changed the 'Customer' class fill color.

The project is now modified and can be committed to the repository. You can commit by clicking on the 'Commit' icon in the toolbar

Comments can be added in the dialog box shown, for reference.

The changes you have made will be shown. Click OK to continue committing.

Another user now wants to modify a different part of the project and wants to update the changes made by User A into their own local copy. Updating can be done by clicking on the 'Update' icon in the toolbar.

The modifications made by User A are listed. Click OK to continue updating.

The project will update itself and the changes will then be applied to the user's copy.

Improved Teamwork Project Usability

Our newly reimplemented code synchronization engine now fully supports Java 5.0. This feature is demonstrated below using a class with a generic template. First we update the UML model by clicking the 'Update' icon.

The UML model is now updated. Create a new diagram with the updated models.

The template made by reversing Java 5.0 will show in the diagram.

Visual Refactoring

Refactoring is usually done in the source codes. However with the new SDE-EC refactoring can be done visually in the UML Model by making changes in the model and updating it to the source code. Here we will rename the 'Account' class and its attribute.

This is the Java source code of the 'Account' class. If we change the code of the class, the subclasses of 'Account' will also change automatically.

Now we will rename the 'Account' class as 'GenericAccount' and change its attribute to '_account ID'.

To update the code click on the 'Update Code' icon in the toolbar.

Now lets have a look at the changes in the source codes. The Java codes have now been modified, in the superclass as well as it's subclasses.

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