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DSM-tech

Effectively no tools supporting XMI

June 21, 2005 11:39:15 +0300 (EEST)

I just got the following interesting feedback from Siemens' Gan Deng on my earlier XMI entry:

I am asking whether you have any idea what MDD tools currently support XMI 2.0 spec? After a thorough search, I found only 2 tools, i.e, EMF and Coral (which only works under Linux). Do you know whether there are any other tools that support it?
Another question, I had a very hard time when I tried to import/export XMI files between various MDD tools although they all claim they support some version of XMI. I could NOT succeed even once! Do you have any idea which exact 2 tools are actually interoperable with each other?

That says it all: the whole point of XMI is interoperability, but there is no pair of tools between which it works. Version 2.0 has been out since 2003, and yet only 2 tools could be found that even claim to support it. That's a pretty strong indictment of the XMI standard itself, but also of the claim that UML is a standard: the fact is that each vendor (and even each user) interprets the spec in their own way. Part of the fault may be in the users and vendors, but if you've ever read the spec it's clear where the majority of the blame lies: not in the individuals who made the spec, but in the whole idea that there could be one modeling language that would be good for everyone. To be useful to everyone, it would have to be so big that it could no longer be good or effective for anyone.