Feature comparison

[togo]

Hello,

I'm currently evaluating several UML tools for use in our company. Among the finalists are EA and "VisualParadigm for UML" (VP-UML). At this point, both tools have major advantages and disadvantages over each other. I'll probably end up recommending we buy EA, but I would like to have your comments on the following feature comparison and if you plan to address those issues (I only list the points I would like to have your comments on, and for completeness, I also include some points where your tool wins over VisualParadigm; of course, there's no need to comment on those):

[*] + First off, your documentation winns hands down over VP-UML. It's one of the major plus points!
[*] = VP-UML's diagram drawing interface is very "sexy": hover the cursor over a shape and several buttons appear around it giving quick access to creating related shapes and connectors.
EA, on the other hand, only offers the "arrow" button, and a context menu that pops up when dragging the arrow somewhere. I can see that the conext menu is easier to decipher than VP-UML's icons. Still, VP-UML's positioning guide lines and the drawing interface in general seems more feature rich.
[*] - Related to the previous point: when adding new shapes in VP-UML, it's major properties may be edited directly inside the diagram (name, ...). EA, on the other hand, pops up a modal dialog. This is very annoying when having to quickly add, say, twenty classes to a diagram.
[*] - VP-UML assists a lot when drawing sequence diagrams: return messages can be created automatically by clicking a context-icon on the call message. In EA, one has to create a regular message and then check the "return" box in the propertes dialog. It would be great if you added drawing tools to directly create the most commonly used message types. Auto-creation of return-messages would be a plus.
[*] + For timing diagrams, VP-UML's interface is not intuitive, and EA wins hands down.
[*] - VP-UML offers better support for writing use-cases. Several templates are available for each scenario, and one can automatically create sequence diagrams from those scenario.
EA doesn't offer any templates. Worse, it's not even possible to format the use case scenarios as tables, and the flow of events is always formated as a single-column list with ugly numbering ( 1), 2), ...).

This is a very important feature for us: the possiblity to insert use case templates, and enhanced formatting possiblities (two columns, ...). In particular events in alterate flows and exceptions cannot be numbered in a reasonable way. It must be possible to enter the main flow as 1., 2., 3., ..., and alternate flows as eg. 2.1., 2.2, .... If you expanded your use-case support with those features,  this would become a killer feature!
[*] + EA provides C# round-trip support. VP-UML only analyzes .NET assemblies, so comments are not imported and one ends up with compiler-generated helper-classes.
[*] - However, VP-UML creates very usable class diagrams from reverse-engineered code! In particular, it supports .NET collection classes and correctly displays the relationship in the class diagram. EA, on the other hand, doesn't create very usable class diagrams. No relationships are created betwen a class containing eg. a list of other objects, and those object's class in the diagram. Or did I miss something ?
[*] - VP-UML's report generation seems better. One ends up with nicely formatted PDFs whereas EA creates isolated RTF files (with cyan-colored table backgrounds: this color should be illegal anywhere!). You suggest to create a master Word document, but it would be nice to provide a sample document to get the user started more quickly. And how do I get rid of that cyan background?
[*] + Of course, EA wins on price.
[/list]

Of all of the above, if you had better use-case support, I would not even have spent a week evaluating VP-UML. If you invested some time in developing that feature, other potential customers may also more quickly decide for your product. Unless I'm the only one writing use cases...

Regards,

Togo

[Eve]

You may find it better suits your way of working to use linked documents for use cases.  These offer templates, and a fully featured editor.  Linked documents are also included in the report generation.

- Related to the previous point: when adding new shapes in VP-UML, it's major properties may be edited directly inside the diagram (name, ...). EA, on the other hand, pops up a modal dialog. This is very annoying when having to quickly add, say, twenty classes to a diagram.

We support editing major properties directly inside the diagram too.  See http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/EAUserGuide71/index.html?elementitemtasks.htm

- VP-UML assists a lot when drawing sequence diagrams: return messages can be created automatically by clicking a context-icon on the call message. In EA, one has to create a regular message and then check the "return" box in the propertes dialog. It would be great if you added drawing tools to directly create the most commonly used message types. Auto-creation of return-messages would be a plus.

You may find some of the options for sequence diagrams useful.  See http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/EAUserGuide71/index.html?sequencediagrams.htm

- However, VP-UML creates very usable class diagrams from reverse-engineered code! In particular, it supports .NET collection classes and correctly displays the relationship in the class diagram. EA, on the other hand, doesn't create very usable class diagrams. No relationships are created betwen a class containing eg. a list of other objects, and those object's class in the diagram. Or did I miss something ?

No, you didn't miss anything.  This is a known limitation, and one that we will address in time.

[Jeff Odell]

I second the UML suggestions on this post.  Lack of features here is something we have to "overcome" with customers to get EA into the client.  Also, having Use Case steps called out in some structured manner would allow for all kinds of reporting, code and test generation, etc.  As a chunk of text it is just that.

The text formatting helped, but structure Use Case information would be the ideal.

[flexjoly]

Hi,

Although this is a very old topic, I would like to respond to it.
Recently we also tried Visual Paradigm and Enterprise Architect. The GUI from EA still misses a lot of features that VP offers out of the box.

We will go with EA because the reverse engineering (php) is so much better then VP. EA is also better in linking elements and subdiagrams (but I did not look much into this in VP, for I could not find it easily enough).
And in EA you can extend with scripting.
Pricing of EA is still better although the monthly price for VP looks also very nice.

But we found it a difficult dilemma which one to choose.
I think if EA would update the GUI, many VP users would change to EA.

The GUI is so important because it saves or costs time to edit the diagrams. Not only time, but EA also demands much more unnecessary clicking, which gives more change to RSI....

I am a programmer, working at home in small company... making about at least 10hours of at least 6 days at the computer.... And I guess many of the programming-users of EA are like this  So any click less, is helpfull.

So please!!! please!! EA make the GUI better please!

Greetz, flexjoly