Has anyone used UML?

[Alan Gauld]

Mats Wichmann wrote:
> Yes, it's kind of interesting that way.  Three of the main
> practitioners of OO methodologies and modeling strategies all ended up
> working for Rational,  leaving them with the odd situation of having
> the proponents of three different modelling schemes on staff.  

Not true! Rumbaugh and then Jacobson specifically joined 
Rational to create the UML. By the time they joined they 
already recognised the need for a unifying language.

Rational Rose(the CASE tool) already existed (indeed was at 
version 2 at least) and was based on Booch's notation. The 
first version to support UML still had Booch as default...

> all...  on the other hand, it may be that Rational Rose really is
> "that damn good" (personally, I have zero experience with it).

When it first appeared (around 1992) it was the best thing 
available - almost the only thing available - for "round 
trip engineering". ie You could draw a design, generate code, 
modify the code and then suck the code changes back into 
your design. First time I saw that I was astounded at how 
good it was. Nowadays several tools do the same tricks 
- with pretty much equally unsuccessful results! But they 
are all better than nothing for a significant sized project.

Likewise they are all overkill for a small one!

Alan g.