What tool do you use to model your domain objects?

Question

I am looking for a tool that will let me model my domain as well as map exports of it to other formats. Is there anything good out there?

Answer 1

I know it costs money but have you looked at Visio?

Answer 2

Whiteboard.

Answer 3

Cheap and dirty, there is dia for windows

Answer 4

I would say to look at the following if you want to spend money

• Visio
• Rational Rose
• Enterprise Architect

If you want to go the free route you could take a unique approach to it this way. Get NetBeans (I know it's JAVA) and then get their modeling plug-in. You could draw the models and save them

Answer 5

If you're talking about business domain modelling, go with the whiteboard suggestions. Models are first and foremost a communications device: you should use them to get to a common understanding between yourself, other developers, your end users and whatever other business stakeholders there are. The earlier the better, since few things are as expensive to change as your data model. But never mind exporting to different formats: this kind of model isn't something you just plug into software. In John Zachman's terms, they are contextual or conceptual.

If you are instead talking about models that drive your objects or integration schemas (logical level) or directly go into database design (physical level), tools may be of help. Which tools are best depends on how much modelling you do, and for what purposes. It sounds like you're doing single systems rather than a slew of enterprise stuff: otherwise, an enterprise model repository like alfabet or Aris could be a justifiable investment (but not necessarily!).

Look to the other answers for modelling single systems at the logical or physical levels. There are plenty of tools, free or commercial, of varying usability.

Answer 6

JUDE Community is a free UML tool that works very. The Professional edition can export C++ or C#, and it's only $280.

Answer 7

Enterprise Architect 7.5

Its an excellent utility that fully supports UML, as well as several other modeling standards. It is not free, but it is almost industry standard as pretty much everywhere I have worked, EA was the de-facto standard tool for creating models.

Answer 8

a couple tools I have come across

• Liaison Contivo
• CA ERwin Data Modeler

Answer 9

Maybe you want to try ARIS Express, which is free-of-charge and includes data models (http://www.ariscommunity.com/aris-express).