I have looked at Describe 6.17. It uses XMI as its native format to store
UML models.
From those XMI files (or the property editor in Describe), one can tell that
Describe 6 uses a metamodel that is a hodgepodge of UML1.4, UML2.0 as of
2003, and lots of proprietary extensions. Here are some examples:
Class diagrams:
Instead of "Property", Describe still distinguishes "Attribute",
"AssociationEnd", and "Part".
Associations always own their association ends, as in UML1.4. As a Describe
6 speciality, aggregations/compositions have their own metamodel type
"Aggregate", as do navigable association ends ("NavigableEnd").
Generalizations have been updated to UML2. Interface realizations are still
called "Implementation", though.
There still are TaggedValues from UML1.x.
....
Activity diagrams:
Instead of actions, an "Activity" has Describe's own "InvocationNode" and
"ActivityState" elements; all activity edges are "MultiFlow" instead of
either "ControlFlow" or "ObjectFlow"; "JoinNode" and "ForkNode" have been
combined into a "JoinForkNode", ...
State diagrams:
Regions from UML2 have been introduced. However, every state has a "Region",
even states that are not composite/concurrent. entry/exit/doActivities are
of type "Procedure", which is not in UML2 and has nothing to do with
"Procedure" from UML1.5, ...
And so on, this list could be continued for a while. Such major and minor
deviations permeate the whole meta model. As you can guess, an XMI importer
will not able to make much sense of out this without massive customization.
Unfortunately, this situation is typical of many current UML modeling tools,
and probably the result of slamming UML2 features onto the existing UML1.x
implementations to "support the new standard" as quickly as possible...
--
Jürgen Wüst, SDMetrics.
http://www.sdmetrics.com - UML design quality measurement
