StarUML

Last updated
StarUML
Developer(s) MKLabs Co. Ltd.
Initial releaseAugust 7, 2006;18 years ago (2006-08-07)
Stable release
v6.0.1 / September 18, 2023;15 months ago (2023-09-18) [1]
Written in Java
Operating system Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux
Type UML tool
License Proprietary (free evaluation license, personal licence, commercial license, site licence)
Website staruml.io

StarUML is a software engineering tool for system modeling using the Unified Modeling Language, as well as Systems Modeling Language, and classical modeling notations. It is published by MKLabs and is available on Windows, Linux and MacOS.

Contents

History

StarUML is the successor of an object oriented modelling software called Plastic. Plastic 1.0 was published in 1997 to support the OMT notation. [2]   The version 1.1 published in 1998 dropped the OMT to support in favour of UML.  The last version under this brand was called Agora Plastic 2005 and was published by the Korean company Plastic Software Inc, Seoul. It was an internationalized product, compliant with UML 1.4, and claiming to support the Object Management Group's MDA approach. [3]

The software was renamed StarUML 5.0 in 2005 with a view to publishing it as open source. The aim was to provide UML 2.0 support as well as the capability to use third-party plugins.  The first public release was published August 2006 on SourceForge [4] under GNU GPL license. [5]   The source code included multiple copyright notices for the period 2002-2005 by Plastic Software Inc.  The software targeted at that time the Win32 platform and was essentially written in Delphi.  The software evolved over several years as open source project and was recognized as an MDA tool with a capability to assist in reverse-engineering existing code. [6] A last open source version is published in 2010.  It may still be used nowadays,  but according to the owner of the product, if would no longer be maintained nor supported. [7]

A crowdfunding campaign was launched in 2014 to finance a revival of the project under the name StarUML 2. The aim of the initiative was to add support for other languages than Java and other modeling notations than UML. The campaign failed to raise the needed funds: less than 1000 USD were collected, that is 1% of the campaign's target.  

The South Korean company MKLabs publishes since 2014 the new versions of StarUML and licenses them under a commercial proprietary scheme.  The old open source version is referred to as StarUML 1 in the product documentation, and the version numbering was restarted at 2.0.0.  which was released in 2014. [8]   A multiplatform version 3.0 was released in 2018 for Windows, Linux and MacOS.  Version 4.0 was released in 2020. It included timing and interaction overview diagrams.  Version 5.0 was published in 2022 and supports Apple Silicon.

Features 

StarUML offers object oriented modelling capabilities. It supports most of the diagram types specified in UML 2.0. :  

StarUML also offers support for SysML:

StarUML supports legacy modeling notations, such as:

Formats

StarUML 2.0 uses its own file format with the .mdj extension. These are JSON text files. [9]   The application can also export manually selected fragments of a model into separate files with having the .mdf extension and import them back.  It can also import files from StarUML 1 which use the .uml format.

StarUML can generate HTML, PDF and EJS files do document a model.  

It can also export JPEG, WMF, SVG and PNG pictures.

Other information

A study [10] published in 2017 by the IEEE and the ACM has analysed the main software products used for the teaching of modeling. It was based on an international sample of 150 academics.  StarUML was the third most used product with 23.9% of the respondents having used it in their courses.

WhiteStarUML

WhiteStarUML
Developer(s) Janusz Szpilewski
Final release
v5.9.1 / March 25, 2018;6 years ago (2018-03-25) [11]
Operating system Microsoft Windows
Type UML tool
License GNU GPL v2
Website sourceforge.net/projects/whitestaruml/

At the end of 2011 StarUML was forked under the name WhiteStarUML. It addresses various issues most notably related to handling recent version of Windows and modern screen resolutions. The definitive update was posted in March 2018.

The last update by the developer on 4 April 2020 [12] indicated that WhiteStarUML development had ceased. Reasons cited include the difficulty of working in Delphi, as well as the lack of community interest in supporting the project development.

See also

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References

  1. ↑ "StarUML download page". StarUML. September 18, 2023. Retrieved October 9, 2023.
  2. ↑ "About StarUML - History". staruml.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  3. ↑ "Agora Plastic 2005" (PDF). omg.org. 2005.
  4. ↑ "StarUML". SourceForge. 25 March 2014. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  5. ↑ "StarUML - License". staruml.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  6. ↑ Liang, Yan (2009). "Toward automatic artifact matching for tool evaluation". Proceedings of the 47th Annual Southeast Regional Conference. Clemson, South Carolina: ACM Press. pp. 1–6. doi:10.1145/1566445.1566466. ISBN   978-1-60558-421-8. S2CID   14574688.
  7. ↑ "StarUML - Frequently Asked Questions". staruml.io. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  8. ↑ "StarUML - Release Notes". staruml.io. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  9. ↑ "MDJ File Extension - What is an .mdj file and how do I open it?". fileinfo.com. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  10. ↑ Agner, Luciane T. W.; Lethbridge, Timothy C. (September 2017). "A Survey of Tool Use in Modeling Education". 2017 ACM/IEEE 20th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS). Austin, TX: IEEE. pp. 303–311. doi:10.1109/MODELS.2017.1. ISBN   978-1-5386-3492-9. S2CID   9423085.
  11. ↑ "WhiteStarUML project". SourceForge. March 25, 2018. Retrieved September 5, 2018.
  12. ↑ Szpilewski, Janusz (April 4, 2020). "WhiteStarUML / Tickets / #73 Java Reverse Engineering PlugIn". Sourceforge.net. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
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