Re: UML via XML ?

[Boris Daix <Boris.Daix@insa-lyon.fr>]

Neil Graham <neil@cs.toronto.edu> writes:

> Hi Boris.  Strictly speaking, this is off-topic, so we should probably
> take this off-list at some point...

I'm blind and I intend to use Linux to do something... I hope it's not
too OT ; and the problem is covered nowhere -- if it is, please let me
know...

> On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Boris Daix wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> 
>>    I was wondering if some of us have already worked on UML models :
>
> As a matter of fact, I just finished a week-long course in UML and design
> patterns.  Admittedly, it used Rational Rose, which is a heinously
> inaccessible tool;

It's the product I'm supposed to use too, here at INSA
(www.if.insa-lyon.fr) 

> but even setting aside that, UML is basically an
> intensely graphical--pictorial might perhaps be a better term--means of
> representing objects and their relationships.  i.e., I didn't get much 
> out of the UML component of my course, and it's not clear to me
> how useful UML itself can be to folks who are blind.  

It's a standard in software engineering (I didn't talk about Merise,
that's a french method, graphical too), and I'll soon be asked to give
UML as I'll be supposed to read it : sure, I won't work directly with
this method, but there should be a way to match these needs, via Linux
especially.

>> it seams that using XML to do this is a good way, but I'd like to get
>> some experience feedback if any.  
>
> Judging from http://www.omg.org, there is a standard that describes
> "metamodels" in an abstract way; UML is a special case of
> a metamodel.  This is MOF, or the metaObject Facility.  To facilitate a
> vendor-neutral means of representing MOF, OMG has developed XMI--XML
> Metadata Interchange.  So it should be possible, if you took an XMI
> representation of a UML model, to do something really intelligent with it
> in order to make it usable by us.

Yes, and that's what I'm looking for :-) It seams possible, that's why
I'm investigating it, I feel the solution is not so far... I can say
that, for sure, the software you mentionned can export UML works in
XML-like formats, that's already a not-so-bad thing.

> But I said possible, not obviously tractable.  :)
>> But I can say that I intend to use emacs + psgml + tdtd to work with
>> this stuff, as these tools look very appropriate.  
>
> Remember that XML is not an SGML language, so you probably don't want to
> use an SGML parser for it. 

Well, psgml is an emacs-mode, not a parser.  But anyway, I've read
that SGML parser can read XML, as HTML : the Python modules for SGML
are often used to parse HTML, as it's a "tag-fashion" language too.
What can do the biggest is supposed to do the simplest...  I'm not
talking about processors/generators yet, just editing utilities
accessible to us.

> There are loads of XML parsers that will run
> on Linux and that can be called from all manner of languages; let me know
> if you want references (I get paid to work on the Apache Xerces-Java
> project, so I have to know a bit about this. :))

I don't know this project but all info is welcome, in private this
time, maybe ;-) 

> I've only started delving into this; would love to hear from the many more
> experienced developers on this list with other perspectives.  (That is, if
> Hans doesn't shut this down first. :) )

He he...  I believe that if I say to my teatchers "Hey, look, with
GNU/Linux, I'm able to work with UML (via XML)", I'm sure Open Software
would be clapped for hours ! :-)

Thank you for reply
Bye
-- 
Boris Daix

	"Feel free to be Free, or not to be..."