RE: XMI reality check

[LONJON Antoine <alonjon@mega.com>]

Bob,

XMI is just a set of rules to dump a model into XML.
When a model has a weak meta-model it has a weak translation into XML. 
There is a meta-model for diagraming is UML (called projection) that is not
very powerful. This is the reason why model graphics are not well preserved
in XMI.
Rational has done an extension that allows Rose to save its graphics into
XMI. MEGA Suite understands Rose's extension for graphics.
The OMG is working on an extended meta-model for diagramming. Sridar Iyengar
form Unisys is in charge of that project.

Regards


-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Haugen [mailto:linkage@interaccess.com]
Sent: vendredi 16 mars 2001 14:08
To: 'Kanaskie, Kurt A (Kurt)'; 'Jim Clark'; Welsh, David
Cc: Race Bannon; 'ebXML-BP@llists.ebxml.org'; 'ebXML-CCBP-Analysis
(E-mail)'
Subject: RE: XMI reality check


Kurt,

Thanks a lot.  I assume this was IBM's alphaworks XMI toolkit?
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/xmitoolkit 

Did you try exchanging XMI models between different UML tools?

>IBM's toolkit was also better at preserving the model graphics when
imported.

Did that mean, preserving model graphics thru XMI was not very good
even with the IBM toolkit?

-Bob Haugen


-----Original Message-----
From:	Kanaskie, Kurt A (Kurt) [SMTP:kkanaskie@lucent.com]
Sent:	Friday, March 16, 2001 12:26 PM
To:	'Jim Clark'; Welsh, David
Cc:	Race Bannon; 'Bob Haugen'; 'ebXML-BP@llists.ebxml.org';
'ebXML-CCBP-Analysis (E-mail)'
Subject:	RE: XMI reality check

All,

I have had some experience with XMI (Unisys's plug in for Rational and IBM's
XMI toolkit). I agree XMI is ugly but it was intended for machine to machine
exchange of models, not human readability. I have found IBM's version to be
more complete that Unisys's for what I was trying to do. IBM's toolkit was
also better at preserving the model graphics when imported.

I successfully used XSLT on the XMI from a UML model, based on Booch's
meta-model for XML Schema, to generate a human readable XML DTD. This
approach is being finalized by OAG as their method of generating DTDs from a
UML model of all of their BODs (170+). Thus I believe that XMI can be used
to generate XML instances of business processes modeled in UML. However,
this approach will require some consistency changes to the UML version of
the Spec Schema.

Another benefit of XMI is to generate meta-model instance DTDs that can be
used to check model instance UML models. The stock tools to generate these
DTDs are also quite ugly and not human friendly, but serve the purpose. 

Regards,
________________________________________________________________
Kurt Kanaskie
Lucent Technologies
kkanaskie@lucent.com
(610) 712-3096


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