Question

I try finding a good way to develop a software project instead of spending a lot of time in the development and coding phase but I do not find a suitable solution.

I know a little about Visio – Rational Rose – Paradigm and other UML tools.

What are the good analysis and design tools that i may use in OOP, OOD, Data Structures and Design Patterns ?

May you inform me with the best software or the one you tried and found it good to do that ?

Is there any software tool that we can provide it with the analysis and design of the project in the format of database including tables and its relations OR the format of Object Oriented Programming inclusing Classes and their realtions then to provide us with the whole software project written in the specified programming langauge like PHP – ASP – JSP or any other langauge ??

Thanks in Advance …

Answer 1

I don’t know of any tool that, out of the box, allows you to model the whole system graphically (using e.g. UML) and then generates a complete, working, full stack application (i.e. UI + Domain Logic + Persistence).

There are some options that will give you some of the above however:

1. There are various UML-based tools that will generate part of the solution for you. @netcoder mentioned Enterprise Architect above, there’s also AndroMDA (open source, works with a number of UML tools).
2. There are Executable UML tools that provide a full, complete modelling environment – where you design your complete application – including logic – in the tool, then translate to your target environment. See e.g. Bridgepoint. These are however not free and tend to target the embedded market. As such, they don’t have ready-made translators for web apps:: you’d have to write one yourself.
3. There’s webdsl. It’s not UML based – uses a collection of textual Domain-specific languages instead. But it does provide a complete, integrated environment (including eclipse IDE plugin) and generates fully working java-based web apps.

I’ve used all three on projects, would summarise as follows:

• The UML plugins (AndroMDA, etc.) I don’t like. Because they only cover part of the problem you end up working at mixed levels of abstraction (models vs. code) and keeping it all in sync is generally difficult (the “round trip engineering” issue).
• I like the Executable UML tools. They provide a consistent set of abstractions and don’t suffer from models going out of sync from code because there’s no round trip. However, developing your own translation rules is a non-trivial undertaking. They’re also expensive and pretty niche.
• I’m very impressed with WebDSL (using it on a current project). The environment is good, language is integrated and consistent and covers full stack. It’s still a young project, and again is niche (language is non-standard). But it’s open source, evolving quickly and has a responsive if small community.

Which route you take (if any) will really depend on where your priorities lie.

hth.