Sparx Systems, an Austrian based vendor of UML tools, has recently published version 9.2 of Enterprise Architect. The new version adds features like enhanced simulation capability and support for describing ontologies.
No matter whether engineers like it or not, but the Unified Modeling Language represents the standard means for modeling software systems today. As a consequence, almost all modeling tools are based on UML. Sparx Systems probably is one of the most successful creators of UML tools in the industry. This is the reason why Enterprise Architect is used in many companies.
One of the issues in modeling is abstraction, especially when various disciplines are involved. Only leveraging static diagrams is not very helpful whenever the main aspects of a system is its dynamics. To support better understanding of systems that can be modeled using the state machine paradigm, Enterprise Architect 9.2 is now providing enhanced simulation capabilities. This is particularly useful when developing embedded systems as Sparx Systems demonstrated during the OOP 2012 conference.
In addition, the new version supports other features such as
- Baseline Diagram Comparisons which allows to highlight all differences between the current model and its baseline.
- Specifying Ontologies using ODM (Ontology Definition Metamodel) which allows to define ontologies. ODM supports standards such as OWL and RDF.
Software engineers interested in the new version may download a trial version.