Feature list/comparison for Visual Paradigm UML

Hi,

I’ve been trying to find the full feature list and comparison chart (does one exist) for all versions of Visual Paradigm. I’ve been looking for this list over the course of two days now. Something like this is essential to compare with other products to make a buying decision.

If there is a list please make it easier to find and if there isn’t, there really should be.

Thanks,

Andrew Dike

Dear Andrew

Thank you for your email. Please found out the edition comparison pages for the Visual Paradigm products at the following links:

Visual Paradigm for UML
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/vpuml/vpumlfeaturecomparison.jsp

SDE for Visual Studio .NET 2003
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/sde/vs/sdevsfeaturelist.jsp

SDE for Eclipse/IBM WSAD
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/sde/ec/sdeecfeaturelist.jsp

SDE for JBuilder
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/sde/jb/sdejbfeaturelist.jsp

SDE for NetBeans/Sun ONE
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/sde/nb/sdenbfeaturelist.jsp

SDE for IntelliJ IDEA
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/sde/ij/sdeijfeaturelist.jsp

SDE for JDeveloper
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/sde/jd/sdejdfeaturelist.jsp

SDE for WebLogic Workshop
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/sde/ww/sdewwfeaturelist.jsp

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.

Best regards,
Rain

Thanks alot,

a)
but what about a comparison between

Visual Paradigm SDE for Eclipse ( or VS.NET,…)
and
Visual Paradigm for UML ?

Especially with the PROFESSIONAL version,
Code Round-Trip Engineering through IDE Integration
is supported by
Visual Paradigm for UML.
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/vpuml/productinfovpumlpro.jsp

So what do I get with VP for UML, what I don´t get with the VP SDEs,
and vice versa ?

If I see right, with “VP for UML professional”, I don´t get a Visual Studio integration, but an integration for most other IDEs ( and not just ONE SDE as with the SDE versions) ?!

So with the professional version,
is there a difference in workflow
when working with an SDE version or the VP for UML version ?

So whats the decision-making argument between

Visual Paradigm SDE for Eclipse ( or VS.NET,…)
and
Visual Paradigm for UML ?

on each level ( enterprise,pro, standard, modeller, personal, free) ?

b)
Especially what about C++ suport for the SDE versions for Netbeans and Eclipse ( I asked this question at another message in this forum already ),
versus the C++ support with VP for UML ?

c)
Whats the difference in workflow, from user point of view,
between

Reverse Engineering
and
Code Round-Trip Engineering (VP-UML Integration ) ?

So the VP for UML Standard Edition just supports Reverse Engineering,
what’s the limit in comparison to code round-trip engineering, with your tools ?

Sincerely
Rolf

Hi Rolf,

Let me answer your questions one by one.

Question: Difference between VP-UML and SDE-VS.

Answer:
You are right. The main difference is how they integrate with the IDE(s).

VP-UML can integrate with multiple Java IDE. It does not support Visual Studio.

SDE-VS, as suggested by the product name, can integrate with Visual Studio .NET (2003 and 2005).

Both VP-UML and SDE-VS supports round-trip engineering starting from the Professional Edition.

Question: Which one to choose?

Answer:
If you are going to develop .NET application, I suggest you use the SDE-VS since it supports round-trip engineering with .NET languages (C++, C#, VB.NET) while VP-UML does not.

If you are going to develop Java application with Eclipse, both VP-UML and SDE-EC are suitable for you. Then which one to choose? The answer is depending on which way you want the UML environment to work with the coding environment.

The IDE Integration comes with VP-UML require running VP-UML and Eclipse in two separate windows, thus two separate VMs.

The integration comes with SDE for Eclipse runs the UML environment within Eclipse through the seamless integration. It acts as a plugin of Eclipse and it shares the same VM as Eclipse.

Question: C++ support for SDE-EC and SDE-NB

Answer:
We are still planning the support of C++ for SDE-EC and SDE-NB. I will let you know once there are any news.

Question: Whats the difference in workflow, from user point of view,
between

Reverse Engineering
and
Code Round-Trip Engineering (VP-UML Integration ) ?

Answer:
If you are referring to the Instant Reverse for reverse engineering, the workflow is to select Tools menu and then Instant Reverse.

For round-trip engineering, you can update the code and model in several ways. Try right-click on the class code files (*.java within your Java project) and the code content, you should find the menu items for updating model from code. From the UML side, there are buttons in Diagram Navigator for you to update code from model. You can also select class models and then choose the update menu item from the pop-up menu to update code from model.

Question:
So the VP for UML Standard Edition just supports Reverse Engineering,
what’s the limit in comparison to code round-trip engineering, with your tools ?

Answer:
The Standard Edition lets you reverse engineer your code base into UML class models, but not support code generation.

The Professional Edition supports both reverse engineering and code generation. There are two ways of reverse engineering. The first way is also the one supported by the Standard Edition, called Instant Reverse. For Instant Reverse, each reverse engineering process is a distinct one that overwrite changes to existing class models. The second way is through round-trip engineering, which merges the changes from code to model instead of overwriting.

I hope the information has helped. Please feel free to post again if there are any unsolved problems.

Best Regards,
Jick

Thanks alot.

But question again:

Is there a difference in features and functionality between

SDE 3.3 for Eclipse / Visual Studio
and
VP for UML

on the level of UML and other features,
especially in the professional version ?

Thank you very much for describing the TECHNICAL differences in your first answer, now the question is about non-technical differences, but about programming tools and “language” features.

So is everyting of VP for UML also available with SDE 3.3 for Eclipse / Visual Studio, and vice-versa ?

So are both all SDE 3.3 anf VP-for-uml built on the same framwork, i.e. the same “code”, so that ANY progress in features ( and corrections / bugfixes ) is available with both versions, without special effort for your development team, in general ?

Maybe there is some difference in function between SDE 3.3 for VS on one side and SDE 3.3 for Eclipse & VP-for-UML on the other ?
So what’s possible with the SDE 3.3 for Eclipse and VS-for-UML, what is not available with the .NET version, and vice versa ?
Again a chart would be nice.

I learned from this forum
http://forums.visual-paradigm.com/posts/list/1541.html
that you don´t support J# at this moment. Ok.

Sincerely
Rolf

Hi Rolf,

  1. The features supported by SDE-EC, SDE-VS and VP-UML are the same for the same edition (excluding the ‘TECHNICAL’ differences)

  2. Sorry but I do not know much about the development stuff. But I can be very sure that changes (bug fixes, enhancement, addition of new functions) made on ANY product will appear in others as well.

  3. The major difference is the supported language, which is not included in your list of interest. Another difference is that, VP-UML lets you change the look and feel while SDE uses the look and feel of the IDE it works with.

Hope the information has helped. :smiley:

Best Regards,
Jick

Wonderful !
Please ask your marketing office to make this more obvious to the potential customers !
This information you gave me in your 2 answers IS NOT SAID on your website, AFAIK.
And for me, it is NOT OBVIOUS.
Maybe a slogan like

“2 faces but 1 heart”

(sorry for my bad english :slight_smile: ) would be helpful.

As I know from another ( UML ) tool, there is a classical standalone version and a (newer ) plugin version cooperating with other tools. So the cooperating version is totally rewritten and therefore NOT 100% the same. Customers are very suspicious about such differences.

Especially on the feature-list pages like

a typical customer can’t find out easily
that even the different SDE version have the same features…
should everybody check the pages versus the other, to find out if there is something “missing” with one of the tools ?

Suggestion: 1 Feature-List page “for all tools” ( and PDF comparison chart ), plus a special (almost empty ) feature-llist page for each tool.

  1. So can all SDEs and VP-for-UML can exchange their project and data files ?
    If so, Is the data 100% “the same”, so no loss of information by such a conversion ?
    What happens if a SDE for Visual studio project is loaded into SDE for Eclpse / VP-for-UML, and vice-versa ?

So is it possible to design a project with your Java tools ( VP-for-UML, SDE for Eclipse ) and then generate the .NET code with the SDE for VS, and vice versa [with the professional editons]

Or is it more advisable / likely to exchange by the XMI format ( for the professional editions)?

  1. Thanks for the free community version for testing, very much !

From my point of view, serious or even hobbyist use of your tools start with the professional editions - from developer’s point of view, painting UML without code generation is mostly a waste of time, or burden driven by the need to create a documentation for the project, at least it costs extra time mostly not available with projects. Neither hobbyists nor commercial developers don´t “like” to waste time… for double work.

Maybe I say this because I use one of the grandfathers of all round-trip-UML-engineering tools ( “unpayable” even for small-business companies:-(), in university projects, and so I know the benifits ? :slight_smile:

So from marketing point of view, I am suprised that you offer THREE ( personal, modeller, standard) versions whch do not generate code.

I don´t see the marketing potential for 3 NON-code versions besides a cheap hobbyist version ( for hobbyists who WANT to paint UML 2.0 diagrams and ARE WILLING to pay, but not much ], and you won´t grant the coding feature for this market segment and the cheap price.

Or is there the idea that a team of 1 non-coding designer and 3 coders just buys 1 model version and 3 professional versions, so that they save money ? ],

but maybe it is JUST so much cost-inexpensive for you to offer the “extra” versions ?

So a
“what role in development demands what version, especially with the 3 non-coding version ?”
chart would be nice. Remember that now with Microsoft VS Team Editon, the “role” concept is a very hot topic for software development teams:-).

Of course the professional version is for 100% coding developers, who LOVE and NEED round-trip development. This is of course your major project and competes in price and features with other professional tools on the market.

Sincerely
Rolf

Hi Rolf,

Thank you for your continuous feedback. Your gave us a lot of valuable opinion from the user perspective. :slight_smile:

About the suggestion of product comparison page/PDF, I will forward your opinion to our web development team for further consideration.

Question: So can all SDEs and VP-for-UML can exchange their project and data files ?

Yes. The .vpp file extension is a common file format for all Visual Paradigm products.

Question: Is the data 100% “the same”, so no loss of information by such a conversion ?

Yes, the data is 100% the same. But be aware of the limitation of the tool itself. For example, if you open a .vpp file which contains UML diagrams in DB-VA, you won’t see any UML diagrams. (DB-VA is one of our product for data modeling and database engineering)

Question: What happens if a SDE for Visual studio project is loaded into SDE for Eclpse / VP-for-UML, and vice-versa ?

You need to think carefully before doing this. This is because the project file of SDE-VS is supposed to be conformed with your source code. If you suddenly replace it with another VP project file, and if you update code from that project, you may loss your code because the project can be entirely different (think about if you update code with a blank new VP project file :evil: )

Question: So is it possible to design a project with your Java tools ( VP-for-UML, SDE for Eclipse ) and then generate the .NET code with the SDE for VS, and vice versa [with the professional editons]

Yes, it is certainly possible.

Best Regards,
Jick