While looking at the Visual Paradigm site, I see there are two primary Products - Visual Paradigm for UML (VPUML) and the Smart Development Environment (SDE). I see some very nice comparison charts that show differences between the various versions for each product, but I am a bit confused (sorry to say) as to the primary difference between each of these products.
Is it solely a case that VPUML is a stand-alone product/application and SDE is a plug-in for various IDEs? If so, is that the only difference? I noticed the pro version of VPUML can integrate into several IDEs as well.
Can someone please give a rundown as to the differences between the two products? Thanks in advance!
The way how SDE and VP-UML Professional Edition (VP-UML PE) integrates with other IDE is very different. To sum up:
SDE integrates with one particular IDE only, while VP-UML PE can integrate with more than one IDE (Eclipse, JBuilder, NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA).
SDE integrates seamlessly with the IDE, you do not have to switch back and forth between two applications. With VP-UML PE you have to switch between two applications in order to perform UML modeling and code synchronization.
So to choose which product depends on your requirements: If you want to get a more user-friendly IDE integration then SDE is the choice, if you want to integrate with more than one IDE then you should choose VP-UML PE. You can download the evaluation version of SDE and VP-UML PE to better understand their differences.
Thanks for the information. That sums it up nicely. I wasn’t sure if there were other major differences that I was missing
I think I will download the eval of each and see if I find a strong preference either way. Of course, it sounds like VP-UML PE has the advantage that if I ever switch IDEs I can still use it with the new IDE.
I was wondering exactly what Mark was wondering several months ago, and am glad that you have for the most part answered them. I understand the 2 major differences you mentioned.
Can you clarify though how much of the codebase, particularly on the actual modeling features, between the 2 products are common, ballpark? My concern is whether feature related bugs between the 2 are more or less independent.
If they are mostly independent, then my evaluation would depend on the feature related bug list of the 2 products. If not, I would just evaluate based on the 2 differences you mentioned.
Almost all of the functionalities are common between SDE and VP-UML, and so are the feature-related bugs. However, there are exceptions that are specific to SDE which are listed below:
Code engineering related functionalities (generate code, reverse code, select in code, …). It is because how SDE interacts with the IDE code model varies among IDEs.
User interfaces that invoke SDE features from the IDE. These include invoking through the IDE’s menus, context menus, toolbar buttons. It is because how SDE interacts with the IDE user interface varies among IDEs.
SDE for Visual Studio 1.2 has got the open specification dialog boxes and context menus of classes, attributes and operations fully customized for the .NET languages, which are SDE-VS specific.
