Open source Analysis & Design tools

Question

When you move from analysis of the requirements through design, you go through a decomposition/workflow/dataflow/composition/etc process.

I need tools to facilitate this process.

The result of analysis & design would be an implementation design which I can happily document using UML.

• I cannot use UML for analysis & design: it is a documentation tool.

What open source analysis and design tools are available?

Which would you recommend?

Examples (commercial, unfortunately), with descriptions of the type of tools I am looking for, can be found on this site: Volere. The site focusses on the requirements-phase, but most of the tools goes beyond that.

Answer 1

I do design by reading the analysis material and drawing pictures. I only draw pictures in UML. That's how I do design, using the standardized design notation of UML.

I'm a big fan of Argo UML. The price is right and it does a lot. For example, it keeps track of documentation, deferred issues; it checks for common design and modeling problems.

Answer 2

For ERDs, Power*Architect is the way to go. It's free, open source, and does a really great job helping you build your database diagrams. Plus, it works on Windows, Linux, and OSX.

If you plan on using UML, check out StarUML. Much like Power*Architect, it's free and does many of the same things as its more expensive counterparts (i.e., Rational Rose)

Answer 3

One product I have used is dbDesigner but unfortunately it seems to be dead as it was taken over by MySQL WorkBench. WorkBench looks like a good product, although the last time I tried it had a lot of bugs, but that was a couple years ago.

Answer 4

Use Case Driven by XML

Answer 5

On Windows, if you already have Visio, then there is an excellent UML template you can download for free at: http://www.softwarestencils.com/uml/index.html. It is much better than Microsoft's version (which is biased toward C#).

Answer 6

Not open source but they do have a free community edition, Visual Paradigm, it supports large parts of the design chain, User Stories, CRC and others.

Answer 7

To all the UML-punters:

Analysis: When you have set of requirements from a user, you need to analyse them to find the inputs, objects, roles, processes, outputs, relationships, data-elements, rules, etc., etc.

Design: Once you have the above information, and after even more refinement, you start to compose use-scenarios which in turn will be formalized into specifications.

Nowhere in the above processes can UML be used.

Documentation: Only when you have your system specification can you use UML to produce a formal version of said specification. The only possible use for UML is to document your system specification.

Answer 8

MindMaps