[Uml-user] Umbrello and XMI

[Anna Persson]

Hi all!

I have some questions about Umbrello and XMI. If someone would give me some answers or comments I would be 
REALLY grateful! Background and questions follows below. (Sorry for my bad English)

Background:

I am a university student doing my final year master project. My project is about possibilities to use open 
source modelling tools when working with distributed (professional) modelling in hetrogenous development 
environments. As part of my work, I have tried to interchange UML modelling information between various 
modelling tools using XMI. Umbrello is one of the modelling tools I have evaluated in the study. Export of XMI files 
from Umbrello seems to work fine in all situations. Problems appear when importing XMI files into Umbrello from 
other modelling tools where the XMI version differs from 1.2. It seems not possible to import other versions of 
XMI then 1.2 into Umbrello. This limits the number of modelling tools that can be intergrated (can exchange 
modelling information) with Umbrello. 

Questions:

1)Is there any plans to support newer versions of XMI (like 2.0) in Umbrello?

2)Do you think it is critical that Umbrello can be integrated (can exchange information) with other modelling 
tools?

3)Some modelling tools doesn't support “general” import/export of XMI files. Instead they support import of XMI 
files from a number of specific tools and they export XMI files for specific tools (eg. Rose XMI) . Is there any 
plans to suppport tool specific XMI import/export in Umbrello as a complement to the current “general” 
approach?

4)XMI is an “open” standard that can be “adjusted” by tool developers implementing it. This means that 
interchange of XMI information between two modelling tools may not work, despite that the two tools supports 
the same version of XMI. Do you think that XMI as on open standard currently is succesful? Or does the XMI 
standard have to be “less open” in order to actually work?

5)Many modelling tools can just handle one specific version of XMI, which limits the number of XMI files that can 
be imported in the tools. Why is it like this? Is it hard to support several versions of XMI in the same tool? Or is 
the tool developers more interested in the export function rather than the import function?

6)My study has shown that exchange of XMI information between modelling tools are really troublesome and I 
know that others have experienced the same problems. Are these problems related to insufficiences in the XMI 
standard or to insufficiences in the tools? Or both?

7)What do you think about the future of XMI? 

8)Are there any alternatives to XMI (apart from solutions based on repository technologies)?

9)Is there an  interest in information exchange between tools from users of modelling tools?

Regards,
Anna Persson

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