EasyUML is a new member of the “textual modeling tools for UML” family of tools.
It offers a set of easy to use textual notations that are then translated to graphical UML diagrams. Almost all UML diagrams are supported (it seems that only the deployment diagram is missing). The diagrams can be exported to PDF, PNG and SVG formats.
EasyUML is deployed as a web application. It’s NOT free (though it IS possible TO try it FOR free) but if I’ve interpreted this correctly, all the proceeds go to charity.
FNR Pearl Chair. Head of the Software Engineering RDI Unit at LIST. Affiliate Professor at University of Luxembourg. More about me.
Hello Jordi,
The term “web application” might be a bit misleading
according to the manual (http://www.easyumleditor.com/easyumluserguideinst.htm) EasyUML must be installed locally.
Nevertheless, it uses a http-communication with a local service. Seems like a really strange deplyoment approach to me.
Also, EasyUML seems to work exactly like UmlGraph (http://www.umlgraph.org/). Regrettably so many people like to start their own project from scratch instead of contributing to an existing project.
Best regards,
Andreas
Hi Andreas,
It´s true that easyuml is not available as an external web service. Indeed, when downloading the tool you get a WAR file that can be deployed and executed using the localhost of your computer.
In fact, as you can see in the list of textual modeling tools there are around 10 tools with this same purpose
Wrt why people prefer to start their own thing, I´m afraid I don´t have an aswer for this. I guess this is part of the human nature.
I am assuming the idea was to give users a Web based interface to create all kinds of UML Diagrams. This can be installed on a server and then accessed via browser from any where with in the network, rather than the traditional tools which need to be installed on local machine, so i am guessing it would be more useful collaboration (where users of different projects can share their designs) tool rather than just UML design tool.
Well, since the syntax IS the same AS PlantUML, they should AT least mention it ON their web site.
And since the generated images ARE exactly the same AS PlantUML, I am guessing that they ARE simply USING PlantUML.
I am wondering what the GPL licence says about this 🙂
I contacted them to offer them the opportunity to give their view on this
So did I.
I don’t think there was a bad intention here: they simply apology, and they have put a link to PlantUML on their site.
As you may know, I am promoting the use of PlantUML in several ways (see http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/running.html), and with their work, they are contributing to this effort.
This text driven approach is very handy, and we definitly need a standard on this. The more tools use the same syntax, the better chance to have such a standard 🙂