UML CASE tool using XML, XSLT and microsoft .NET framework

Abstract

Aims The aim of the project is to study and investigate how to improve a Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tool’s interoperability by Extensible Markup Language (XML). The study will be realized by developing a CASE tool that supports Extensible Markup Language Interchange (XMI) 2.0 and Unified Modeling Language (UML) 1.3 with class diagram construction and code generation capability. Achievements Having finished the project, the following deliverables are produced: proposal, interim report, final report (this document) and a workable program. In addition to these tangible outputs, the following goals are also achieved in this project: Get familiar with Microsoft .NET Framework • Microsoft .NET Framework introduces a new object oriented (OO) paradigm for developing windows forms applications. Unlike the predecessor procedural approaches like Windows Application Programming Interface (Win32 API) and Visual Basic’s Rapid Application Development (RAD) for windows forms, all the .NET framework classes used in windows programming are abstracted and encapsulated in classes. Having developed the application of this project, I learnt a lot of .NET skills in developing windows application. For example: o To develop an application using OO approach. o To handle graphics using Graphical Device Interface (GDI+) o To manipulate the XML and XSL documents using the .NET framework library. Understand XMI 2.0 specification and its importance in object modeling industry. Since the program developed in this project should support XMI 2.0, a study on this specification is carried out. The program adheres to this specification to produce valid XMI documents. During the process of study and implementation, I learn how to construct an XMI document and how to manipulate it. Besides, I also learn how XMI enhances a CASE tool’s interoperability and its gaining importance in industry. A software list that support XMI can be found in appendix A. Value of the project Currently there are four versions of XMI specification (1.0,1.1,1.2 and 2.0) proposed by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and this project focus on the latest version (2.0). One of the major advantage of using XMI 2.0 than the other is the support of the XML Schema. Prior to XMI 2.0, class diagram is described using DTD, which have several limitations when compared to XML schema. DTD itself is not an XML document, it cannot take those XML's advantages. Also, DTD is not type awareness, it can only describe an XML structure, but cannot specify the type of the attribute's value. Since XML schema is much superior to DTD, supporting schema is one of the value of the project. Even commercial CASE tools, there are not many support schema. In addition to the XML schema support, this project also develops a class library based on IBM XMI Framework to abstract the XMI logic and simply its usage. This library can be reused for other projects that need to handle the XMI. IBM's XMI Framework is written in Java and there is no other version, for example C#. Since the project targets on Microsoft .NET platform, a lot of time and efforts is put to construct such a library using C#.