I have installed UML Netbeans plugin for reverse engineering to automatically convert my Java code into UML. But my question is, how can I draw the activity diagram using the Netbeans plugin? Whenever I select activity, sequence , collaboration or any other UML diagram instead of class diagram, still only class diagram is created. It doesn't create the desired UML diagram.
There was a powerful UML plugin in NetBeans several years before, but there is not now. They had some problems with license. But you could install free 30-day Visual Paradigm (version from professional up) and create classes diagrams there. That is what I already had to do having the same task in 2014.
Enterprise architect has same possibilities. But VP has free version that you can use after 30 days. Now VP again can be connected to NetBeans. https://netbeans.org/features/uml/. But the VP license remains to be your problem. And the plugin creators promise only code generation, no back engineering.
EasyUML is the free UML plugin for NetBeans now. Class diagrams only. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pq2fZYPpwo.
Also you can install Eclipse and create diagrams there. Eclipse has rich possibilities for UML. https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/uml-java-generator. Or more simple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zlh56mTS6c.
And notice, the class diagram is the only strict UML diagram, that can be converted to code and back. (with some limitations, too). For other diagrams it is simply not possible. Oh, it is possible to create something that is a correct diagram, but you can do it in many ways and the result diagram will show only some details of the code and surely they will be not necessary details for which you would like to create a diagram.
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I have a project in which there are many different packages, and in those packages there are different Java classes along with interfaces.
I want to draw the class diagram and the relationships between the classes and interfaces, and how the methods flow.
So please advise me a tool which I can install in my Eclipse that will generate those diagrams specially the freeware plugin..!!
Check Visual Paradigm. It is very user friendly and free tool.Since you are using eclipse you can use the Eclipse Plugin for visual paradigm.
I use ObjectAid to reverse engineer the java classes to generate UML diagrams and it works pretty well, has an option to export the diagrams to image format as well.
If you are okay to NOT reverse-engineer the code and generate diagrams on your own from scratch, then [Violet UML Editor plugin for Eclipse] is a free UML tool. There is a jnlp version of this that can be run as an independent application, outside eclipse, too.
I've an android project opensource written in Java (Eclipse). There are about 300 classes..I wanna to be able to understand the code quicker and to have a general representation of all the classes, interfaces and to know how they are connected each other.
Is there a way in Eclips or an external utility that could help retrieve the class structure of the project?
I have not tried it, but this looks good: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jug/
EDIT: Well this one looks even better: http://www.objectaid.com/home
EDIT 2: See this, too: http://www.nwiresoftware.com/
I haven't done that yet with Java, but you can try some of the options discussed here:
How to generate UML diagrams (especially sequence diagrams) from Java code
to get UML diagrams of your code
There are quite a few UML plugins available out there for Eclipse. It's really about how much information you want and which you feel comfortable with. The most popular one I found is Object Aid but a quick Google search for UML plugins for Eclipse returns a number of options.
If you want detailed UML diagrams then I highly recommend taking a look at Enterprise Architect. It provides tight integration with Eclipse. The desktop version is quite affordable.
I have one product which is developed in J2EE, the technology that I used as Java, JSF, and for the back end I used AS400 (DB2 database). I am using eclipse IDE. Are there any tools which can help me draw the flow of my product, UML diagrams and the class diagrams.
A UML tool that I like is plantuml It lets you write a text description of a diagram, so you have a lot of flexibility in what you include or exclude. There are plugins for everything from Eclipse to Microsoft Word and even an online servlet. There are tools to reverse engineer classes and you can also embed diagrams into javadoc if you wish.
This is good one. It can draw class, activity,sequence and Usecase diagrams.
http://amateras.sourceforge.jp/cgi-bin/fswiki_en/wiki.cgi?page=AmaterasUML
StarUML is a very good option. It is free and supports most of UML2. This is not being maintained but it is rock solid for what you need.
Use interaction diagrams to document high level flow of your product
Use class/object diagrams to provide static view
Use activity diagrams to document workflow/algorithms
Take a look at Visual Paradigm SDE for Eclipse
Link: http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/sde/ec/
you can capture requirements, design databases, generate code, implement software and generate reports. SDE supports UML, entity relationship diagram, BPMN and SysML.
Also there are different versions a good version is the Comunity one which is for free..!
You need to create an UML model from your database.
You can use Dali without EclipseUML but database annotations would be lost during the UML reverse engineering if not using Omondo.
I am looking out for a eclipse plugin or an open source tool to reverse engineer the sequence diagrams. I tried using Alto UML, but it just gives out sequence diagram of the class chose. I would like to have a sequence diagram of the whole call stack with methods, input arguments and output arugments as well.
Could you please let me know some pointers on this? Thanks!
Architexa does have sequence diagrams for the whole call stack with methods. What you will find is that unlike typical UML tools Architexa is much more code-centric and therefore would work much better for reverse engineering.
-Vineet (Architexa founder)
Look at this Wikipedia article comparing reverse engineering tools.
(repeat from How to Create Flowchart from java source code in Eclipse for completeness):
I found this Eclipse plugin Flowchart4j V 2.0.0 et
http://www.codeswat.com/
You can use it for flowchart or sequence diagram and export it to MS Visio.
It has only one disadvantage. You have to pay for it.
Diver: Dynamic Interactive Views For Reverse Engineering can solve part of your problem. It provides both static and dynamic sequence diagrams for Java applications. It does not store the inputs and outputs though.
It is a plugin for Eclipse and lets you:
Easily trace your Java programs
Visualize your program’s runtime functionality
Filter your traces to make them more compact
Filter your IDE based on what occurs at runtime
See what code ran in your source code editors
It's on Github and there is also a project web site
Full Disclosure: I am the current project lead for Diver
Take a look at the MoDisco open source eclipse project MoDisco
(repeat from How to Create Flowchart from java source code in Eclipse for completeness):
I am not sure if there is a plugin for this but there are certainly techniques for doing this. If there is no plugin available, theoretically, one could follow the approach of such techniques to build one. One such technique that comes to mind is contained in the paper Object naming analysis for reverse-engineered sequence diagrams by Atanas Rountev and Beth Harkness Connell.
Here's the abstract:
UML sequence diagrams are commonly used to represent object interactions in software systems. This work considers the problem of extracting UML sequence diagrams from existing code for the purposes of software understanding and testing. A static analysis for such reverse engineering needs to map the interacting objects from the code to sequence diagram objects. We propose an interprocedural dataflow analysis algorithm that determines precisely which objects are the receivers of certain messages, and assigns the appropriate diagram objects to represent them. Our experiments indicate that the majority of message receivers can be determined exactly, resulting in highly-precise object naming for reverse-engineered sequence diagrams.
HI All I am at the end of the release of my project.So in order to keep working our manager asked us to generate Class Diagrams for the code we had written.Its medium project with 3500 java files .So I think we need to generate class diagrams.First I need to know how reverse engineering works here. Also I looked for some tools in Google(Green, Violet) but not sure
whether they are of any help.Please suggest me how to proceed.Also a good beginning tutorial is appreciated.
I strongly recommend BOUML. Its Java reverse support is absolutely ROCK SOLID.
BOUML has many other advanteges:
it is extremely fast (fastest UML tool ever created, check out benchmarks),
has rock solid C++, Java, PHP and others import support,
it is multiplatform (Linux, Windows, other OSes),
has a great SVG export support, which is important, because viewing large graphs in vector format, which scales fast in e.g. Firefox, is very convenient (you can quickly switch between "birds eye" view and class detail view),
it is full featured, impressively intensively developed (look at development history, it's hard to believe that such fast progress is possible).
supports plugins, has modular architecture (this allows user contributions, looks like BOUML community is forming up)
The tool you want to use is Doxygen. It's similar to Javadoc, but works across multiple languages. If figures out the dependencies, and can call graphviz to render the class diagrams. Here's an example of a few Java classes run through Doxygen.
This is more a toolchain than a tool and I haven't tried it out myself. But it maybe a starting point. Using UMLGraph, ant and GraphViz. Explained step by step: in this article.
I ve used Visual Paradigm for UML for what you want to do and it was quite good.
See here for details.
Just go Tools -> Instant reverse and select your packages.
You may be able to reverse engineer class diagrams with the open source modelleing tool ArgoUML http://argouml.tigris.org/
ObjectAid is pretty nice. You can drag classes into a diagram and arrange them the way you want.
Visual Paradigm for UML Standard Edition (or Better) will reverse engineer Java files in to Class Diagrams.
I guess if your boss just wants to keep you busy until the next project starts then there's no harm in it, but you will find pretty quickly that creating a class diagram with 3500 classes will tell you exactly NOTHING about your system. In fact, you don't really want a diagram with more than about 10 classes on it. So once you have reversed all the code into your modelling tool, you will want to start organizing and arranging to find the meaning. Create a new diagram, drop a single important class onto it and bring in all the classes that are directly related to that class. Repeat for maybe the 300 most significant classes. Don't worry, it isn't as horrible as it sounds, maybe a week's work.
For the record, my modelling tool of choice is Enterprise Architect by Sparx Systems. It will reverse java sources or .jar files. There is a free 30 day trial edition.
There are some tools available that will help you generate these diagrams. These cost money.
Otherwise you could to try to parse your Java files. This could be as simple to create a simple parser that reads the Java files and writes the name of the class and all the import statements to a file and generates a class diagram from there, graphviz can help you there.
I've been using Enterprise Architect for a number of years. A JBoss developer suggested it to me. It works very well for all types of UML modeling including the reverse engineering of class models (Java, C# and others). The basic version is currently $120 per seat, but it has most of the capabilities of much more expensive tools and it is much easier to learn. I particularly like its ability to generate HTML and RTF documentation.
It is very easy to synchronize code between the tool and your source code. Even bi-directional if you want.
Your PM may also like the activity and sequence diagrams that it can create. I also frequently use the deployment diagrams. It's very helpful to have all of this in one tool.