Microsoft Visio's Open Source Alternatives(1/3)

Most of the peoples are too much use to with Microsoft Visio.In today's blog entry I will discuss some open source alternatives of Microsoft Visio and we will see how rich these tools are in terms of their features and functionalities and I personally prefer these tools over Microsoft Visio .Not just only these tools are free/open source but also due to these tools are more user friendly and rich in their functionalities.














I am going to discuss just few tools which I explored personally which are

1. Argo UML (Targeted for all UML Diagrams)
2. DB Designer(Targeted to only ERD Diagram)
3. DIA (Too rich tool all type modeling diagram including UML,ERD,Network diagram etc)
4. Netbeans Plugins (I like too much because I can build artifact under one umbrella

Open Office Drawing ,StarUML and many other options are which available I have no experience how they are.

Today I will just discribe ArgoUML features and in next two blogs I will describe other remaining tools ArgoUML
ArgoUML is a powerful yet easy-to-use interactive, graphical software design environment that supports the design, development and documentation of object-oriented software applications. Like many other UML tools of this caliber ArgoUML provides code generation. The following programming languages are support for code generation: Java, C++, C# and PHP. The Java support is best since it can be used for round-trip engineering using the reverse engineering feature. ArgoUML also has partial support for user models such as decision model, goals model, etc. Finally diagrams can be exported in many graphical formats, primarily GIF, PNG, PS and SVG.

Main features:

• Open standards: UML ,XMI, SVG and PGML

• 100% Platform independent thanks to the exclusive use of Java

• Open Source, which allows extending or customizing.

• Cognitive features like: reflection-in-action, opportunistic design, comprehension and problem solving

• It is able to create and save most of the nine standard UML diagrams.
  

• Ease of use and User friendliness

• Reverse Engineering and Code generation

How to install ArgoUML?
http://argouml-stats.tigris.org/documentation/quick-guide-0.28/ch02.html

How to Use ArgoUML?
http://argouml-stats.tigris.org/documentation/manual-0.28/