Documentation Tools? Any comments?

one more concern, the code that am reading at, is not fully OO concept.  Thus i assume the UML is hard to translate as well. :-(

Too Bad.

>1. I wonder in the market or internet, any UML Tools can help to speed up the Documentation process? Is all these UML tools will help to trace the program and also let peole understand the existing code easier??
MagicDraw http://www.magicdraw.com/ is very good. The new version can do reverse engineering from source code, but i haven't try it out :p

>2. UML is the only way to do documentation? Any other way to "document" the code that we have developed?
JavaDoc is the most common java documentation. You can use WSAD to export it (right click > Export > Javadoc).

>3. Currently I am using WSAD.  Any UML Bundled with WSAD that can help to speed up the documentation????
Beside getting the slow and expensive Rational plug-in, there's no UML tools bundle with WSAD.

You can try these UML tools:

Question  Are there any open source/free UML tools for Java developers?  
Derived from  A question posed by Sean Sullivan  
Topics  Tools, Process:UML:Tools  
Author  Sean Sullivan  
Created  Nov 30, 2001  
 



Answer
Open-source / free tools:
  - ArgoUML http://www.argouml.org/ 
  - JUG - Java UML Generator http://jug.sourceforge.net/ 
  - UML Modeller (KDE app for Linux) http://sourceforge.net/projects/uml/ 
  - UML Library for Java http://sourceforge.net/projects/nsuml/ 
  - Quick UML for Java http://sourceforge.net/projects/quj/ 
  - UML Sculptor http://sourceforge.net/projects/umlsculptor/ 

I've played around with Argo.  It has a reverse engineer utility, but it is limited.  Even if one of these tools (You could even try the commercial tools like Rational Rose), they ONLY will reverse engineer JAVA files.  I don't think it is possible to reverse engineer JSP pages.  I'm afraid the only way to document the application is to manually draw it yourself.

I would start with an Activity Diagram, which traces the flow from page to page.  As for improving the documentation, the best way is to improve the code.  As you are going through the code, note where the code is hard to read and/or is reapeated from other places.  If all of the code is in the JSP pages, start refactoring them into MVC (Model, View, controller pattern).  Where the Model is the DB query, View is the JSP, and the Controller is a Java Action.

 
 
 

MogalManic, among all these recommanded URL,
which one have you tried?

Regarding the Activity Diagram, is that those mannual Acitivity flow diagram that you are referring? Means need to draw myself mannualY??

boonleng, thanks for the magicdraw. I will try it out. Hopefully it's help.

tq. to both of you.

but then BoonLeng, have you tried to use MagicDraw to draw those un-OO type of code?

Im not sure what you mean "un-OO type of code",
but bad coding probably end up with a class diagram with very few relationship, everything is standalone.
then you will have to depend on the sequence diagram.

I have MagicDraw 7, tomolo i will download version 8 and try it out.
coz it can do reverse engineering to sequence diagram, most tools can only generate class diagram.

>which one have you tried?
I've tried the ARGO UML.  It is primative.  It doesn't come near to the functionality of Microsoft Visio.  I'll have to try the other ones!!!

>Regarding the Activity Diagram, is that those mannual Acitivity flow diagram that you are referring? >Means need to draw myself mannualY??

I mean that you will have to manually figure out how the application works, and either using Pen & Paper and/or UML modeling tool, build the activity diagram.

Friend, i haev tried the MagicDraw 8.0.

It's seems that this is normal way of coding UML. From the diagram come out with the code.

But now i am doing reverse....so, magic draw is out!!!

I am downloading Argo now...

Which version of MagicDraw8.0 you tried, only professional and enterprise version able to perform reverse engineering.

I have tried the enterprise version and able to convert the java classes to class diagram.
I also managed to reverse a simple code to sequence diagram :)
For large process flow that involve many classes is a bit difficult to reverse, i need to pratice a bit more to get it done...

boonleng, i have tried the rational rose and downloaded the Magiscdraw personal and CE.

I notice that i manage to perform the reverse engineering. But i couldnt get the connectivity or the relationship among all my code.

Is that normal?

I want to do UML because i thought i acn have a better understanding of my overall code. :-)

thank you boonleng, you help a lot.

thanks