What's New in Visual Paradigm for UML 7.2 Service Pack 2?

Flow of events editor

Flow of events sample with steps and extension

Use case flow of events editor helps system analyst to describe series of interactions between users (actors) and functions (use cases). Different scenarios can be represented by different flow of events.
In the new version, flow of events editor supports specifying extended use cases and inserting use cases, actors and requirements links to flow of events. The following movie demonstrates how to use the flow of events editor to describe use case scenario.

Tutorial

• Use case modeling with use case grid and flow of events editor

User's Guide

• Documenting flow of events

Online training

• Document use case with use case detail (Free)

YouTube videos

• Adding Use Case Narrative

Layer support

Categorizing shapes into different layers for showing and hiding shapes easier by single-click. Layer can be used to group all annotation shapes, and let modeler hide all annotation shapes when export the final version. The following movie shows how to use layer to control showing/hiding callout shapes in diagram.

User's Guide

• Layer

Report template designer

Design your own report template with visual template designer. The latest version has added a lot of customizable elements and increased usability. The following movie shows how to use report template designer to design your own report template.

Tutorial

• Customize template for documentation generation

User's Guide

• Customizing report

Plug-in support (Java)

Visual Paradigm plug-in provides an extendable platform for developers to add functions to Visual Paradigm for UML. Developer can reference to the plug-in development guide to build their own plug-in to read, create, update and delete diagrams and model elements. Developer can use Java to develop plug-in. The following screenshots outline the steps to create plug-in for Visual Paradigm for UML.

Plug-in support (Java)

Step 1 of 5: Develop the plugin

Setup the environment for developing plugin and start developing the plugin. You need to first include the openapi.jar to the build path, which can be found under the lib folder of VP Suite installation directory. You may read the User's Guide to learn about how to develop plugin.

Step 2 of 5: Prepare the plugin configuration file

Create a file, name it as plugin.xml and place at the root of plugin. You need to fill in this file to provide information such as classpath, toolbar/menubar configuration, etc.

Step 3 of 5: Deploy the plugin

Create a folder "plugins" under the VP Suite installation directory. Copy the developed plugin to that folder.

Step 4 of 5: Using the plugin

Start the tool. If the implementation and configuration are both correct, you should be able to run the plugin.

Step 5 of 5: Using the plugin (Cont.)

With plugin, you may iterate the project data to perform operations such as create, read, remove and update of project data.

Sample plugin

User's Guide

• Introduction to plugin support
• Implementing plugin

Command-line operations

Operations such as exporting project to XML, generating ORM code, generating reports (all types), publishing project and etc. can be done through the command line interface or with Ant scripts. In this connection, you may schedule tasks to run Visual Paradigm operations in background.

Reference model element in documentation

Insert reference model element references to rich text documentation pane. The referenced model elements will be linked and highlighted.

Tool customization

You may want to hide away some diagram types, menu items or toolbar items to avoid your team creating wrong types of model. Visual Paradigm for UML supports customization of User Interface (UI) objects by XML. The following screenshots outline the steps to customize the tool.

Tool customization

Step 1 of 4: Open the Customize UI dialog box

Select Help > Customize UI... from the main menu.

Step 2 of 4: Select the UI components to hide

Select the menus, toolbars and popup menus to hide.

Step 3 of 4: Hide them

Click > to hide the selected components.

Step 4 of 4: Continue modeling

Restart the application and continue modeling. You will find that the chosen components are hidden.

Tutorial

• Customizing Visual Paradigm for UML by XML

User's Guide

• Hiding user interface components

Project publisher

The sharing of latest and accurate business process and system design to customer, team member or other department staff greatly increases the efficiency of communications. Visual Paradigm for UML supports publishing project to web enabled format. The published content contains all information in the project, including documentation, detail property, internal references and external references of each diagram and model element. The published content incorporates some navigation functions to increase the usability such as jump to shape, open reference and popup documentation when mouse over the element. There is no special requirement in both server and client side. Project Publisher can run with system job scheduler to publish and upload project(s) in regular bases. The following movie shows you how to publish project with Project Publisher and use the published content.

User's Guide

• Publish project using project publisher

Class diagram

Class diagram sample shows classes, associations and generalizations

Class diagram is the most widely used diagram in modeling object-oriented system. A class diagram shows a set of classes, interfaces, associations and generalizations. Package is commonly used model element for organizing elements in class diagram. Class diagrams are not just for visualizing and documenting structure models but also for constructing executable system with forward, reverse and round-trip engineering. There is also a synchronization engine for generating and updating entity relationship diagram from class diagram.

Tutorial

• Develop domain and implementation class model
• Organize class diagram with model
• Generate class diagrams from entity relationship diagrams

User's Guide

• Drawing class diagrams

Online training

• Using class diagram (Free)

Export BPEL

Visual Paradigm for UML supports create, edit, visualize and generate Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Web Services Description Language (WSDL). The generated BPEL and WSDL can deploy to standard BPEL engine such as Apache ODE.

Tutorial

• Generate BPEL

Sweeper and Magnet

Modeling is not just about creating diagrams but also the ease of refinement. Good visual modeling tool allows modeler to create and manipulate diagrams in effective way. Visual Paradigm for UML provides sweeper and magnet functions for expanding and compacting diagram without messing up the layout. Please see how sweeper and magnet in action in the following movie.

User's Guide

• Sweeper and Magnet

Project management properties

Define status, difficulty, priority, version, iteration, phase and discipline of each model element for project management purpose.

C++ round-trip code engineering

Generate, reverse and synchronize between ANSI C++ and UML class diagram. The following movie demonstrates reversing C++ to UML class diagram, modifies classes and synchronizes code again from UML class diagram.

Tutorial

• Generate and synchronize C++ code

User's Guide

• Generate/Update C++ code
• Generate/Update UML classes from C++ code

Automatic translation

Translate design to different languages by the automatic translation function. Both model element name and documentation can be translated. The following movie demonstrates how to translate state machine diagrams from English to Chinese.

Tutorial

• Translate diagram with auto-translation

User's Guide

• Translation

Automatic expand diagram margin

Automatic expand diagram base on the growth of design. Margin can be defined visually. The following movie shows how automatic expand of diagram margin works in class diagram.

Specify testing procedures

Testing procedures dialog box

Flow of events describes different scenarios of a use case. The scenarios are guidelines for writing test cases in user acceptance test. Visual Paradigm for UML supports multiple testing procedures to single flow of events scenarios. The following movie demonstrates how to define testing procedures for use case flow of events.

Tutorial

• Develop testing procedure from use case flow of events

Generate PHP doctrine layer

Generate executable PHP Doctrine object relational mapping (ORM) layer from standard UML class diagram and entity relationship diagram.

Define business process working procedure

Write step-by-step working procedures to business process diagram flow objects.

BPMN conversation diagram

Conversation diagrams visualize messages exchange between pools. Design workflow with business process diagram and visualize communications with BPMN conversation diagrams. The following movie shows how to draw conversation diagram.

Handy association editing

Specify all association properties in diagram without going through deep dialog boxes.

Flow of events editor

Flow of events sample with steps and extension

Use case flow of events editor helps system analyst to describe series of interactions between users (actors) and functions (use cases). Different scenarios can be represented by different flow of events.
In the new version, flow of events editor supports specifying extended use cases and inserting use cases, actors and requirements links to flow of events. The following movie demonstrates how to use the flow of events editor to describe use case scenario.

Tutorial

• Use case modeling with use case grid and flow of events editor

User's Guide

• Documenting flow of events

Online training

• Document use case with use case detail (Free)

YouTube videos

• Adding Use Case Narrative

Glossary grid

Glossary grid shows all domain terms in single grid

Identify, document and manage domain terms with glossary grid. Each glossary item can have multiple aliases. All glossary items will be highlighted and linked in model element documentation and flow of events. The following movie demonstrates the basic usage of glossary grid.

Tutorial

• Defining glossary for use case detail

YouTube videos

• Identify Glossary Item from Use Case Flow of Events

Business process diagram

Design workflow with Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) 2.0 standard.
The first movie demonstrates the modeling of typical sales order processing process using BPMN. The movie shows how to create pools, lanes, events, tasks, sub-process, gateway and data object. It also demonstrates how to present the change of states within the process.
The second movie shows some handy functions that can help in business process modeling such as real-time model validation, moving large amount of shapes with sweeper, insert task in existing process...

Tutorial

• Develop as-is and to-be business process model
• BPMN2 business process modeling

User's Guide

• Drawing business process diagrams

Online training

• Introduction to BPMN and BP-VA (Free)
• BPMN 2.0 (Paid)
• Business process modeling technique (Paid)
• Requirements capturing with BPMN and UML (Paid)

Visual Diff

Compare and generate differences between two diagrams automatically with visual diff. Identify differences between two databases by compare two entity relationship diagrams. The first of the following movies shows how to use visual diff to compare the as-is and to-be business process diagrams. The second movie shows how to use Visual Diff to compare the changes between two database versions. Latest release export the differences to PDF for reporting purpose.

User's Guide

• Comparing logical and physical ERD
• Comparing as-is and to-be business process diagram

Animacian

A picture worth a thousand of words, and a movie worth a thousand of pictures! Animacian can configure and generate animation of static design. Animacian supports in business process diagram, sequence diagram and activity diagram. Seeing design in action increase the level of understanding of the design. In latest release, you can define your own animation path in business process diagram.
The following movies show you how to animate your business process diagram, sequence diagram and activity diagram with Animacian. The forth movie shows you how to export animation to Adobe Flash format.

Tutorial

• Animate business process using animacian
• Animating sequence diagram using animacian

User's Guide

• Animating business process diagram
• Animating activity diagram
• Animating sequence diagram

Concurrent modeling with VP Teamwork server

Share design with VP Teamwork Server. All changes will be stored in revision bases. Visual Paradigm for UML employ local workspace concept for collaborative modeling. The normal usage of VP Teamwork Server is to checkout project from VP Teamwork Server, then modify project and commit changes to VP Teamwork Server. Thanks to the concept of local workspace, you may bring your notebook to customer's office, and start working with the project without connecting to the VP Teamwork Server. After all, you will commit the changes to VP Teamwork Server when you back to the office. In the latest release, permission can be configured when import project from Visual Paradigm for UML. The following movie demonstrates how to checkout project, commit changes to server and update changes from server.

User's Guide

• The Teamwork Client
• Checkout project

Online training

• Collaborative modeling (Paid)

Rich text documentation

Write detail description to model elements with rich formatted text. The latest release highlights and links glossary terms from documentation to glossary grid. The following movie shows you how to write rich text documentation and reuse a predefined template.

User's Guide

• RTF documentation

Java round-trip code engineering

Generate, reverse and synchronize between Java code and UML class diagram. In the latest release, Java annotation is supported. The following movie demonstrates how to reverse code to UML class diagram, modify classes and synchronize code again from UML class diagram.

Tutorial

• Generate and synchronize Java code

User's Guide

• Generate/Update Java code
• Generate/Update UML classes from Java code

Online training

• Generate UML class diagram to Java (Paid)

Instant code generation

Generate UML class diagram to 15 programming languages. Supported programming languages include Java, C#, VB.NET, PHP, ODL, Action Script, IDL, C++, Delphi, Perl, XML Schema, Python 2.6, Objective-C, Ada 95 and Ruby. The following movie demonstrates how to generate code using instant code generator.

User's Guide

• Instant Generator for Java

Instant reverse engineering

Reverse engine 12 programming languages to UML class diagram. Supported programming languages include Java, C++, .NET DDL or exe, IDL, Ada 95, XML, XML schema, JDBC, Hibernate, PHP 5.0 or above, Python and Objective-C. The latest version supports reversing source code to package diagram for high level analysis. The following movie demonstrates how to reverse source code using instant reverse.

User's Guide

• Instant reverse Java sources and classes

Matrix

Overview dependencies between model elements by matrix diagram. The latest version supports exporting matrix diagram to Microsoft Excel for further analysis. The following movie demonstrates basic matrix diagram usage.

Tutorial

• Impact analysis with matrix diagram

User's Guide

• Creating a matrix

Report template designer

Design your own report template with visual template designer. The latest version has added a lot of customizable elements and increased usability. The following movie shows how to use report template designer to design your own report template.

Tutorial

• Customize template for documentation generation

User's Guide

• Customizing report

Generating MS Word 2007 report

Generate UML design to report in Microsoft Word 2007 format. The MS Word 2007 report generation feature is available in Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and Unix platform. The latest version supports specifying MS Word document as template.
The following movie demonstrates how to generate MS Word 2007 report with business process diagrams and use case diagrams. The movie also shows how to customize the order of model elements as well as the setup of cover page, page header and page footer.

Tutorial

• Generating Microsoft Word 2007 report

User's Guide

• Generating report
• Configuring report

Ad hoc report creation

Share latest UML design within team across team with project publisher. Project publisher can generate UML design to web format. There is no special requirements to host the published content. The latest version supports glossary grid in published project. The following movie shows you how to publish project with Project Publisher and describes the navigation within the published content.

Tutorial

• Producing a use case report with report writer

User's Guide

• Installing report writer
• Creating report
• Introduction to report writer user interface