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Visualize with Rational Application Developer

A tour of Rational Application Developer's visual diagramming tools

Eric Long (elong@us.ibm.com), Software Engineer, IBM

Eric Long is a Software Engineer in the IBM Developer Skills Program. Eric graduated from The University of Texas with a degree in Computer Science. He joined IBM in July of 2004 and currently works in Austin, Texas. As a Software Engineer, he provides technical information to developers on open source and industry trends and technologies through speaking engagements, Web content, and faculty consultations at IBM Academic Initiative member universities. His work also includes technical demos and content available at www.ibm.com/university.

Summary: Rational Application Developer provides visual diagramming tools to help you gain insight and knowledge of existing applications or to more easily create and understand new applications. After completing this tutorial, you will know how to create class, sequence, browse, and topic diagrams.

Date: 07 Feb 2006
Level: Intermediate
PDF: A4 and Letter (828 KB | 29 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity: 30600 views
Comments:

Before you start

Rational Application Developer provides diagrams which enable you to view code from different perspectives using UML 2.0 notation. These diagrams are referred to as UML visualization, not to be confused with UML Modeling. All UML visualizations in Rational Application Developer are synchronized with a source file. Modifications to the source file will dynamically change the diagram and vice versa. To create UML 2.0 models, you need to use Rational Software Modeler or Rational Software Architect. Stay tuned to developerworks for future tutorials covering the visual capabilities of both of those products.

About this tutorial

This tutorial introduces you to the process of creating UML and non-UML diagrams using Rational Application Developer. This tutorial demonstrates the following Rational Application Developer diagrams:

Class diagrams
Sequence diagrams
Browse diagrams
Topic diagrams

Note:Rational Application Developer can be used to diagram more than just Java classes in class diagrams. Database components can also be diagramed. However, this tutorial does not cover that. For more information on diagramming database components, see the Resources section.

This tutorial is written for developers who are interested in learning about Rational Application Developer's visualization capabilities.

Objectives

After completing this tutorial, you will know how to use Rational Application Developer to create class, sequence, browse, and topic diagrams.

Prerequisites

This tutorials assumes that you have a solid understanding of Java programming. Knowledge of UML 2.0 diagrams is helpful, but not required.

System requirements

To run the examples as demonstrated in this tutorial, you need to have Rational Application Developer installed on your machine.

If you don't already have a copy of Rational Application Developer, you can download a free trial version. All of the prerequisites for Rational Application Developer are located in the Resources section of this tutorial.