[Uml-devel] Re: Universal Model DataTypes in umbrello

[Andrew Sutton]

On Thursday 05 February 2004 01:37 pm, Brian Thomas wrote:
> 	I accept that UML has no universal datatypes per se, but its a problem.
> 
> 	Again, the problem I have with all this is that I want to create  UML
> class 
 diagrams that can be used to generate both java and C++ code. I
> dont see how you can put "Java::String" for an attribute in one class in
> the diagram, and then expect umbrello to  correctly generate
> "C++::std::string" when you change over to C++ code generation from Java
> code generation (which you _should_ be able to do).
> 
> 	Perhaps the model library should be scoped as "umbrello:<datatype>", then
> 	we have a list that looks like:
> 

you're right.. that is a problem. Now that I think about it, there's a package 
of CORBA IDL types and I think that might actually form the foundation for 
builtin types in UML. It would, of course, include a "string" type.

It's funny, I'm writing some notes on roundtrip engineering and one of the big 
problems is mapping from UML to a specific language. There's alot of places 
where this stuff doesn't fit quite right... like mapping primitives from uml 
to C++, Java, or even specific environments like Qt (e.g., string->QString).

maybe the best solution, for now, is to leave it as it is and assume just have 
the code generator rewrite the data type on the fly.

andy