The OpenEdge Hive

This stage is directed at defining a UML Profile for ABL Code and Progress dictionary information. The goal is to arrive at an open standard since there will be far greater potential synergy if all people working on UML modeling are using a common vocabulary. This stage will occur in three phases:

1. Defining the UML Profile itself, i.e., establishing stereotypes for ABL constructs and a mapping between the stereotypes, constraints, and rules of "well-formedness" to the underlying UML components and elements. This phase will be completed in a series of sub-phases which are documented in the working document.

2. Creating an XML file containing the stereotypes in the Profile so that these can be easily loaded into a UML modeling tool.

3. Defining the XMI specifications which implement the Profile, which will thus provide a target format for any tools which are intended to extract information from ABL code and dictionaries for loading into a UML model.

Our initial target UML tool for this work will be Enterprise Architect from Sparx Systems. We will be considering the option of using the automation facilities in EA as an alternative to XMI if it will allow faster creation of the tool, although we perceive XMI to be a more general solution usable with all UML modeling tools of sufficient sophistication.

Please leave comments here as appropriate. Contact Thomas Mercer-Hursh of Computing Integrity, Inc. at thomas@cintegrity.com for information on the current progress of this work.