[Uml-devel] Student Project

[Daniel Calviño Sánchez]

> Kevin Ottens is looking for projects his students could do in KDE.  It
> would be a team of 5 students and he suggested Umbrello as a project.
>
> So we need well defined feature goals that they can achieve.  Here's
> my current list:
>
> 1) document current code base with up to date UML diagram
> 2) SQL export from E-R diagrams
> 3) Support all UML 2 diagram types
> 4) Automatic diagram layout when importing diagrams using graphviz,
> but avoiding evil licencing issues.
>
> Any other suggestions?

Maybe a real undo/redo framework. As far as I know, right now Umbrello
serializes the whole diagram prior to a change, and deserializes it if
an undo must be done. With big diagrams and the application opened for
some time, it can lead to a lot of memory used.
Moreover, when coding, it's error prone, as you must remember to call
explicitly the serialization method, which can be easily forgotten.

I think that using a real undo/redo framework will improve the
application, and also make the code itself cleaner.
QT has its own undo/redo framework. An overview of it can be seen here:
http://doc.trolltech.com/solutions/qtundo/overview.html
However, I don't know if KDE uses it, customizes it or has its own.

I'd like also to point that this goal may be hard and challenging, as
it'd involve touching almost anything in the code (also a great
opportunity to make some needed refactoring ;) ). So maybe a basic
system can be made and then, with time, progressively port all the
actions in the code to the new system.

It could also be included in the "analysis of design deficiencies in a
complex Object Oriented system" said by Oliver.

Regards,
Daniel