Software development with ConceptDraw DIAGRAM
ConceptDraw is a tool for technical and business graphics. It provides specialists who create graphic documentation with a possibility to focus not on the process of drawing itself but on the essence of the task. For this ConceptDraw features a huge number of ready-to-use objects (4590 for the moment of writing the article), smart connectors, layers, hyperlinks and many other possibilities.
Modern development of program software leads to a large amount of graphic documentation: diagrams describing the work of applications in various cuts and notations, GUI design, documentation on project management. Each of these fields is represented by topical libraries and templates.
To ConceptDraw DIAGRAM new possibilities have been added, thanks to which the program became a sequence higher useful for developers. The most considerable innovations are:
Let us consider typical applications.
Over the recent years object-oriented methodology has become more and more widespread. Thanks to this methodology developers manage to deal with growing complexity of applications. More and more programs are written in such programming languages as C++, Java, Visual Basic and Object Pascal. However, the complexity of the designed systems imposes extended requirements as to design of graphic documentation. ConceptDraw possesses powerful tools for designing of technical documentation for object-oriented projects. The libraries included in the package allow to easily draw class hierarchies, object hierarchies and diagrams of data flows with the use of the most popular notations, including UML and Booch notations. And the library for projecting COM-interfaces will spare developers of ActiveX-servers a headache.
Flowcharts of algorithms and business-processes
Prototyping Graphical User Interface (GUI)
For a large-scale project to be completed successfully it should be thoroughly projected. One of the generally recognized and visual tools for projecting and tracking timeliness of the work on a project is a Gantt chart. ConceptDraw offers the wizard for automatic creation of Gantt chart.
The other side of the question of project management is the dynamism of changes. Changes in a project and its documentation are made daily. All updates should be done in time and be available to each developer. ConceptDraw offers many methods of solving this question:
Automation of management and development processConceptDraw DIAGRAM supports XML. XML for ConceptDraw has been created and, at the same time, support for import XML for Visio. All this allows to develop solutions for automation of various aspects of software development.
Visualization of data
ConceptDraw is a good means for visualization of information of any kind. The program features powerful graphic possibilities. Thus, on the ready graphic kernel ConceptDraw the rest products of the line have been developed: ConceptDraw PROJECT , ConceptDraw MINDMAP . This powerful graphic kernel (2D-graphics) is supported by a number of open formats (including XML). To this add the flexibility of data processing, connected with the scripting language ConceptDraw Basic (included in version V), and also the flexibility in parameterization of objects, which is provided by the whole table of the object parameters (which is available for editing even from the program's interface). So in the end it becomes clear that visualizing of information in ConceptDraw is a good idea.
So, the typical task for ConceptDraw Basic is to automate the visualization of some data. This data can be obtained as the result of work of an arbitrary application (including ConceptDraw-script) and saved in a text file, ODBC-compatible database or in one of the open formats supported by ConceptDraw. In the first two cases, data will further be read and visualized with the help of ConceptDraw Basic. In case of using a ConceptDraw open format (XML for ConceptDraw or XML for Visio) the obtained document can be simply opened in ConceptDraw, you can then add some details of design and get a presentable diagram. Possibilities of ConceptDraw Basic considerably increase at using in script the functions exported by the shared libraries.
The conclusion is: ConceptDraw is a platform worth considering for writing solutions, connected with data visualization.
Work with databases
Special attention has been given to work with databases. There are libraries for designing databases in various notations: ORM, Chen ERD and Martin ERD, Express-G and relational diagrams. Starting from version V, ConceptDraw supports ODBC-compatible databases. Interaction with them is possible with the help of the scripting language ConceptDraw Basic. Besides, in ConceptDraw Professional package there is Database Model Diagram wizard (it can be found among the templates of the section ERD & Database). It builds a model of an arbitrary presented by the user in the form of DSN database.
Having applied all said above about possibilities of ConceptDraw in fields of projection, automation and visualization of data, we can conclude, that the program is well designed for solving the following tasks:
- design of databases
- relational diagrams
- reengineering of databases
- visual displaying of data in the form of charts and diagrams