(FC-Devel) Re: Want to Part of Mailing List

[Jason Elliot Robbins <jrobbins@cadet.ics.uci.edu>]

>Dear Jason,
>
>I want to understand Argo/UML architecture , What Shall i do ?
>
>How do I start ?
>Chand

Hi Chand,

 I am also replying to the FreeCASE list because I am sure other
people are wondering the same thing.

Here are some things to do to start:

+ I put up a brief description of the packages that make up Argo/UML
at http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/arch/uml/v03/docs/codeorg.html.  Also,
Argo's Javadocs are available from that same web site, so you can
browse through them.

+ If you are interested in the graphical aspects of how Argo/UML does
diagrams and how those diagrams are mapped to the underlying model,
see the GEF home page: http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/arch/gef.  All the
GEF source code and Javadocs are available.

+ To learn about how designs are represented, I suggest that you first
study the UML spec.  It is available from
http://www.omg.org/docs/ad/97-08-04.pdf.  I have basically made a Java
implementation of the UML 1.1 meta-model that follws the spec very
closely.  E.g., there is a meta-class called AssociationEnd in the
meta-model, and there is a Java class called AssociationEnd in my java
implementation.  I hope that by making a very direct mapping from spec
to code, I have reduced the need for documentation and increased the
number of people who can make use of the library. I would say that I
implemented over 80% of the UML meta-model.

+ To learn about the Argo/UML user interface I would suggest starting
with learning Swing.  You can find out about the Swing library from
http://java.sun.com/products/jfc.  Understanding the TreeModel and
TableModel will help you understand Argo's navigational perspectives,
and it will also make it much easier to understand GEF's GraphModel.

+ To learn about the cognitive features of Argo/UML you can start with
some conference papers I wrote about previous versions of the tool.
You can get a short 4 page paper about Argo's critics that was named
one of the best papers at the 1998 conference on Inteligent User
Interfaces from http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jrobbins/papers/IUI98.pdf.

Also, I noticed that you are interested in databases.  I you have not
already, you might take a look at the JDBC library, it is a java
interface to relational databases.  http://java.sun.com/products/jdbc.
Currently, Argo/UML has no database interface or persistence of any
kind, so that is obviously needed right away.  Some undergrads here
did a database binding for Argo as a class project, but they didn't
get far enough to save a UML design.  I could send you their code as a
starting point if you are interested.  It shows how to open and close
the database, how to read and write records, and some user interface
dialogs for login, errors, etc.

Good luck,
jason!