My first experience using a CASE tool... I always wondered what that stood for – it’s computer aided software engineering tool.
The software is very, very, frustrating to use the first time – cos of the academic license key check that runs every time you run the program. Just a little tip for those wondering why on earth the software on your computer in the lab cannot run, but works for the guy sitting next to you: It’s because he’s logged on to the internet. If you haven’t signed in for the internet yet, and are still just on intranet, the program will just refuse to run. I think this should be posted on moodle somewhere.
Anyhow once I got cracking, I found it really easy to use, managed to figure out how to draw everything pretty intuitively – except how to show multiplicity on class diagrams.
The bit with the magic button
What was really interesting was the fact that I could draw a class diagram with many objects, each of which have defined relationships with other objects as well as their own attributes and methods, and then just click on this function which would pretty much “auto-magically” convert all that into java code for me. I fiddles around with the options here and there and found that with just a couple of settings I could covert all that clunky code it generates by default into something that looks like it’s written by a programmer.
Another cool thing is that you can if you define some attributes, you can just right click on particular ones and select “getter” and “setter”, and when you generate the code again, the code for the accessors and mutators are all just there – which is just brilliant. It’s a godsend for anyone who has had to write a program in Java; just having to write all these basic accessor and mutator methods for almost every attribute in so many different classes is such a tedious and frustrating chore. Now, something comes along, which does it all – just like that!
I have to do this massive assignment for my Java unit, and it requires me to draw a class diagram for the entire program. I had already done the class diagram on paper (with blanks for attributes and methods); I am so going to bring that over into visual paradigm and make my life easier.
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