Choosing a free UML tool

Background

I have decided to write this article for college undergraduate, small sized company that would like to have free UML modeling tool that is required for software design. I believe that comparison is not enough as it is but you need always to specify the context you are doing the comparison for, and usually comparison factors have different weights to each one.

Context

Low budget company or student who would like to have tool for drawing UML diagrams to the latest specs as much as possible, also being able generate documentation for the tool viewable by other colleges or having a viewer for its diagrams. Code generation will be very good option, but mainly sharing the design as images to be able to communicate it to others is the most important.

	Modelio	Papyrus	Astah
Supported UML version	Yes, 2.4.1	Yes, 2.5	2.1 to 2.5 based on user request.
Use-case diagram	Yes	Yes	Yes
Class diagram	Yes	Yes	Yes
Object diagram	Yes	Yes, as variation of class diagram, refer to this forum thread.	Yes
Sequence diagram	Yes	Yes	Yes
Collaboration / Communication diagram	Yes	Yes	Yes
State diagram	Yes	Yes	Yes
Package diagram	Yes, through class diagram.	Yes	Yes
Component diagram	Yes, through class diagram.	Yes	Yes
Activity diagram	Yes	Yes	Yes
Export diagram to image	Yes	Yes	Yes
Publish to Web (Export to HTML)	Yes, free edition Web Model Publisher.	Not by itself, need either modeling gendoc or BIRT, based on this thread. Quite complex.	Yes, professional version
Publish to rtf or doc	Yes, professional edition, Document Publisher, but expensive 400 Euro.	Not by itself, need either modeling gendoc or BIRT, based on this thread. Quite complex.	Yes, professional version
Based on Standard IDE	Eclipse RCP framework	Eclipse	No, seems Java based product only.
UML to code generation (Languages)	Yes (Java)	Yes (Java, C/C++, ADA)	Yes (Java, C++, C#), but professional version only.
Reverse Engineer code to UML	Yes (Java)	Yes (Java)	Yes (Java), but professional version only
Model checking (Pre-defined/Customizable)	-- TODO --	-- TODO --	-- TODO --
Model checking (While saving/On Demand)	-- TODO --	-- TODO --	-- TODO --
XMI version (Import & Export)	Yes, OMG UML 2.1.1 -> 2.4.1 (From Preferences -> XMI)	Yes, 2.1	Yes, but for professional version only
Started since	2009	2008	1999 as JUDE, and renamed to Astah 2009
Release activity	Major release every 1.5 or 2 years Bug fix release: around 4 per year.	1 Major release is planned across 1 year, minor releases are quite few.	No major release since 2009, but most of minor releases has new features, and around 2 - 5 minor releases per year.
Latest release & date	v3.1.2 (2014-05-20)	v1.0.0 (2014-06-25)	v2.8 (2014-02-13)
Has Enterprise version for future upgrade.	Yes	No	Yes
Forum activity	Between low and average	Above average	Between low and average
Extendable and marketplace	Yes	Extendable but not marketplace.	Yes
Integration with Atlassian Confluence	No	No	Yes, for server edition free, not available for cloud
Windows installer	Yes	Yes, eclipse based just as update	Yes
Mac OS installer	Yes, instruction here.	Yes, eclipse based just as update	No
Linux installer	Yes	Yes, eclipse based just as update	No
iPad version	No	No	Yes, iOS 8
Download link	here, around 200 MB	here, around 330 MB for Eclipse Modeling Tools, then papyrus 94 MB.	here, around 60 MB
Youtube channel	ModelioCommunity	Papyrus Eclipse	ChangeVision Astah
General comment	Tool is quite good. Its help is great and search on Internet gets quick answer. Community had a lot of answers to my questions. Require some learning curve for adding and hiding elements.	Documentation is not complete. Tutorial is outdated since 2010. Although download components separately, it took more than 3 hours installing eclipse and Papyrus, even was not responding several minutes. It is quite comprehensive & having lots of features. Very hard from usability perspective. Require longest time learning curve.	Much smaller than other releases. Lightweight tool. Not good interface. Simple in creating attributes, operations.

Conclusion

I have decided to use Modelio for the moment and will keep posting feedback to the page.For anyone viewing this blogpost, take the above table as a base and add whatever factors you would like to have in the tool, and complete the comparison and decide for yourself, I believe the above list contains the best free UML tools as by the time of writing this blogpost.

I'm open for discussion and feedback.

Discarded Products

Product name	Reason for disqualification
Visual Paradigm - community edition	Community is full featured but limited to one diagram per diagram type.
Argo UML	Not maintained since 2011.
BOUML	It became licensed software.
TopCoder UML tool	Last activity in May 2013, after stopping around 3 years.
Gaphor	Only UML 2.0 support.
Dia	It seems not maintained anymore.
NClass	Not maintained since 2010 although its GUI is very good.
yEd	Supports only class diagram& object diagram.
Umbrello	Only UML 2.0 support.
Poseidon for UML community	Only UML 2.0 support.
Star UML 2	Old version has lot of adaptation, but new version which seem complete re-write is still under development. It seems might be very good choice in near future

Comparison References

• Modeling languages: UML tools
• Object by Design: Product by company
• Wikipedia list of UML tools
• Software Talk: Comparison of free UML tool.
• Evaluation of Free UML tools.
• Top 12 Open Source UML tools.

PMP Preparation advices & exam tips

Last updated 15-Mar-2019

I have passed PMP 4th exam on Dec-2012 and would like to share the experience with everyone. The following is the recommended steps from my prospective to prepare and pass the exam:

1- Download PMP handbook pdf
This is a free download from PMI, the link might change for the book; anyway you should find it in PMP certification main page. This book is a MUST read. Always check for newer version as this document changes frequently.

2- Attend PMP course
When you read PMP Handbook, it is a must to have “35 contact hours of formal education”, there are mainly two ways for this:
    a- Attend formal course for PMP in your area, but usually it costs you too much, unless it is included within your company training schedule.
    b- Distance learning by purchasing an online course, and at the end you get your certificate by passing an exam.

I have searched the Internet for quite some time and found the cheapest and really good deal The PMP Exam Simulator. It is around 100 USD (Currently, 139 USD as of Mar-2019), and has great value; lots of people will recommend it to you, other courses I found online was above 250 USD. You can easily watch the video on your computer or other portable devices.

3- Purchase good preparation PMP
Reading a preparation book is very important to clearly understand the idea of PMP and its related tasks, PMBOK is considered tenser and towards exam objectives, I find myself try to understand or seeking more declaration about a subject in preparation book if I can’t understand from PMBOK.

You will find most PMP holders refer to two books for certification:
1.    Head First PMP 2nd edition.
2.    PMP Exam Prep, 6th Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam.

You will find lots of comparison between two books, I prefer that your read those comparisons before purchasing, but most of them mention that Rita is more directed to exam and teaches you as classic text book, while Head first uses its great way for teaching, but it sometimes miss some minor information.
At the end I picked Head first, and I purchased e-book copy for 50% discount from Oreilly using a coupon, so, I suggest before purchasing from whatever website always try to get a coupon from Internet.

4- Becoming PMI.org member
When you read PMP Handbook, fees section, you will find fees differ if you are PMI member or not. All people will tell you better become a member as you will receive discounts on exams, re-examination and renewals plus some more extra stuff. Please create a new account in PMI before applying for individual membership that will cost you 129 USD.

5- Download PMBOK Guide 4th edition
As per your PMI subscription you are eligible to download free electronic water marked copy of PMBOK guide 4th edition (A guide to the project management body of knowledge), it is found in this link. There are other good documents in the same link, but not mandatory for PMP exam.

6- Stick to a study schedule
One of the biggest mistakes that you will do is that you get the certification in relax mode, this may take months or even years. My advice will be making a schedule for the preparation till the day of the exam including solving exams. I have prepared a study schedule using Microsoft Project 2010 shared here (For Microsoft Project 2007 shared here). It has specific study calendar “PMP Study Calendar” of 4hrs/day, 5 days/week. I encourage using it and modifying the project calendar to suite your availability. This link provides a detailed explanation of how to change the calendar in Microsoft Project 2010. You will find that most PMP holder mention that you can have the certification in 3-4 months which matches the project schedule mentioned before.

7- Solving exam questions
You need to solve lots of exam questions before showing for the exam. Following is list of available free:
•    PMP Exam Self-Assessment Test (75 questions).
•    About.com Tech certification (20 questions).
•    BestSampleQuestions.com PMP Sample (160 questions).
•    Test prep review (15 questions).
The above are just samples, you can search and find lots more.

8- Real Exam advices

a- Language aid: If English is not your mother tongue language, apply for free language aid in the exam, this sometimes help in some types of questions.

b- Exam time is limited, you need to be fast: You have 4 hours to answer 200 questions, i.e. you have only 72 secs per question (1st hr --> you should have reached 50 questions, 2nd hr --> 100 questions, 3rd hr --> 150 questions) you should check these milestone in the exam in-order to keep moving as fast as you can.

c- Exam duration is 15 mins tutorial, 4 hours exam, 15 mins survey. The first 15 mins you will have complete tutorial on how to mark and review exam, and use of calculator before you finish this tutorial (As exam will start after this) take the remaining time for writing down all equations you know in a clear paper the testing center have provided you. This is really helpful as you might get distracted from long time in exam and will consume time trying to remember them.

d- Method of elimination is best used for exam, for tough questions, pick any answer from what you think are probably correct before marking the question for review; i.e. never leave a question without an answer.

c- Sometimes for long questions, it is better to start reading the last part sentence to know what it require, before reading a whole paragraph as it is giving stoo much unneeded information.

d- When a question is asking what you will use for a process, it is asking you to pick up input, tool, technique that’s part of the process.

e- Take your time answering “Which is not” question. I think the best way to eliminate confusion is to remove the word “NOT” in the phrase and write down your answers then convert it x --> √ & vise versa. This worked for me very well.

I hope this will help someone there.