Product Review

I have long been a TogetherSoft fan, having used TCC (TogetherSoft Control Center) for several years. It was a great development tool, effortlessly keeping code in sync with diagrams and providing the best reverse-engineering features in the business. TCC had lots of other goodies, such as modeling in color, metrics, and support for patterns, making it more fun to use than Rational's modeling tools. Sadly, TCC was always out of sync with IBM's WebSphere Application Server. For example, it never fully supported EJB deployment to WAS 4.0. This made J2EE development for WebSphere somewhat of a challenge for TCC-based developers, forcing some of them to switch to other IDEs, such as Borland's JBuilder Enterprise, which shipped with a built-in UML modeler from Rational.

I've been using IBM's flagship IDE, WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD) for about a year, and I'm impressed with how smoothly J2EE applications can be deployed to WebSphere from WSAD. WSAD is based on IBM's open-source Eclipse IDE, and provides developers with an impressive arsenal of features. The best feature may be that WSAD ships with an integrated version of WebSphere Single-Server Edition for testing.

Meanwhile, Borland bought TogetherSoft, and partnered with IBM to make TCC a platform for WebSphere development. Instead of plugging deployment tools into TCC, Borland/TogetherSoft decided on a better solution: plug TCC into WSAD and call it Borland Together Edition for WebSphere Studio (TWS). Since IBM owns WSAD, it will (hopefully) stay in sync with the latest versions of WebSphere. Now, Borland and IBM appear to be both partners and competitors.

The first thing I noticed about Together Edition was how tightly it is integrated into WSAD. To create a class diagram for existing code, it was necessary only to open a UML explorer perspective and select a project. To deploy EJBs or any J2EE component, all you need to do is deploy from the appropriate diagram and WSAD takes over, taking care of all the AAT (application assembly tool) details.

A favorite TCC feature of many developers was the ability to auto-generate sequence and collaboration diagrams from any method defined in a Java class. This feature is not available in the current version of Together Edition, but will be available in a future release. Two fundamental features included in TWS are Peter Coad's Java Modeling In Color paradigm, and an effortless, nearly instantaneous transformation of code into class diagrams and back again. These are the features that built much of TogetherSoft's reputation in the marketplace.

Assuming WSAD 5.0 is already installed, once you install Together Edition you will get a new item in your Windows Programs menu called "Together WSE." When you start the program, you immediately have the ability to look at any Java code as a UML class diagram just by selecting the Together WSE Modeling perspective, then selecting the UML Explorer view. From this view you can double-click on the default diagram (or any other diagram) within any package in a project. Figure 1 shows the result of selecting the modeling perspective and opening the auction example that ships with WSAD 5.0. Note the picture-in-picture overview; this is a handy feature.

Together Edition supports all of the UML 1.4 diagrams. Additions to the UML standard include shortcuts (the same modeling element in different views) and hyperlinks (links from one modeling element to another). TogetherSoft provides eight kinds of UML diagrams in Together Edition:

• Class/package
• Use case
• Activity
• Component
• Deployment
• Sequence
• Collaboration
• State

Quality Assurance Tools
Together Edition provides audits and metrics to help you find common errors and overly complex areas of the code base. Audits range from the coding and style audits that have always been a vital part of TogetherSoft projects to technology-specific audits such as those involved with EJB development.

Audits
Together Edition provides a wide variety of audits, ranging from design issues to naming conventions. The process of running audits begins with selecting the specific rules to which your source code should conform. Together Edition generates an audit report that displays only the violations of those rules. You can examine each violation and decide whether to correct the source code.

Problem-Detection Audits
For most violations, the audit report generated by Together Edition indicates the line of code that causes the violation. For some audits, however, such a line number is inappropriate. These are called problem-detection audits. An example is the Misplaced Class audit, in which the package of the class is deemed inappropriate because of the dependency between the class and a different package. For problem-detection audits, TWS uses one or more detection metrics to analyze the code to determine audit violations. TWS audit reports show problem-detection audits along with the line-oriented audits.

Metrics
Together Edition provides a wide variety of metrics ranging from lines of code to comment ratio. When you run metrics in TWS, you first select which metrics are important for your project. You can use the metrics results that TWS generates to determine which code needs to be redesigned, or you can use the results to create reports and compare the overall impact of changes in a project.

Together Edition provides documentation support for your Java projects, supporting Javadoc functionality and more. Output is HTML and can be displayed in the Help browser or in your preferred Web browser.

Still Together Together Edition is essentially TCC integrated into WSAD, with the following differences:

Together Edition only generates and reverses Java code; TCC works with a variety of languages.

Together Edition does not support automated sequence/collaboration diagram generation from existing code, as does TCC. This will be corrected in a future version.

Together Edition supports not only using and creating patterns, but matching patterns to diagrams. This goes beyond TCC's capabilities.

Models can be moved to and from Rational Rose by means of the XMI import/export facility included in Together Edition.

Patterns
Together Edition allows the creation, recognition, and use of design patterns above and beyond those provided by WSAD. The pattern recognizer will detect design patterns in new and existing Java source code. Templates allow new patterns to be created as users see the need to add them for design and domain-specific extensions (see Figure 2).

You can apply preinstalled patterns to new or existing code. Together Edition detects such pattern in your code through its pattern recognizer. You can set Pattern Recognition to run automatically during each build or manually between builds. You can manage patterns, apply them, and save them. You can also apply patterns directly in your model using the Diagram view context menus or the UML Explorer.

Profiles
UML Profiles allow extensions to the UML to be turned on and off. Currently, Together Edition provides UML Modeling in Color, UML Profile for Business Modeling, UML 2.0, Erikson-Penker Business Extension Profile, and a profile for Software Development Processes. In the future, you will able to add your own editions.

Together Edition is geared toward the IBM WebSphere environment. It is built on the Eclipse technology that powers IBM's WSAD. Together Edition for WebSphere Studio and Together ControlCenter are part of the same product family. I have used both, and they have a somewhat different look and feel, in order to appeal to both current users and WSAD developers.

SIDEBAR

Product Info:

Company Info:
Borland Software Corporation
100 Enterprise Way
Scotts Valley, CA
95066-3246
E-mail:
sales@togethersoft.com
Web:
www.togethersoft.com
Telephone: 831 431-1000

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
WSAD version 5.0

Published Mar. 21, 2003— Reads 10,560
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media. All Rights Reserved.

Related Links

▪ Figure 1

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About Jay Johnson
Jay Johnson is a J2EE architect at Qorusoft.

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