Which tools do you recommend for java round-trip-engineering ?

Question

I am especially interested in generating code from sequence diagrams and vice versa- ie., sequence diagrams from code. Ofcourse it would be nice if it was free and better if it was an eclipse plugin!

Answer 1

I've never seen a tool generating code from a sequence diagram in uml or doing opposite conversion. In particular, because sequence diagrams are supposed to provide high-level overview of logic flow.

Answer 2

Altova UModel can generate sequence diagram from the code, but I don't see any point from the opposite direction.

Anyway, UModel has 30 days free trail and it is really a great tool so you should check it.

Here is the link.

Answer 3

You can reverse engineer sequence diagram from code to UML. I don't know any tool creating a java code from a sequence diagram model !!

Answer 4

See Reverse Java for a dynamic reverse engineering application which generates UML Sequence diagram and view of Participating Class diagram from any Java Application at runtime All you have to do is just run your application and sit back. Reverse Java runs in background tracing all the activities happening inside your application and creates UML diagram for you.

You also have options for, excluding packages,editing the Sequence diagram and exporting the diagrams as PDF or Image.

Answer 5

MagicDraw is a good tool. It is written in Java and if you purchase the right pluggins will do the round tripping for you.

Be wary of round tripping too much though - it kinda defeats the purpose of designing if you do too much of it. It implies that you are not really designing and then implementing the design, but rather hacking around inside a UML tool. The project leader at one company I worked for did not allow round tripping at all and did not let developers purchase the tools to do it. Having said that, it can be useful for generating diagrams from an existing code base that you did not write, to get a high level view of design and interactions.