Automation tool for sequence diagram generation

GAITHERSBURG, USA: EventStudio System Designer 4.0, a use case and sequence diagram based system design and architecture modeling tool that runs on Windows has been released by EventHelix.com. EventStudio takes a different approach to modeling. Users model the system in a text based modeling language. EventStudio analyzes the model for design errors and automatically generates use case and sequence diagrams.

EventStudio supports systems engineering and modeling in several application areas. Modeling in telecommunications, networking and embedded systems is supported with message sequence charts and call flow diagrams. Use case and sequence diagram based modeling simplify object oriented analysis and design. Process workflow generation is supported for business process re-engineering applications.

When modeling with EventStudio, developers describe the interactions in the system in terms of a simple declarative modeling language. EventStudio then analyzes the model for design errors, inconsistent operations, resource leaks and invalid timer operations. Once the design issues have been addressed, EventStudio automatically generates sequence diagrams and collaboration diagrams.

EventStudio allows the developers to explore a large number of success and failure scenarios without the overhead of individually documenting each scenario. The developers define a base scenario and then describe other scenarios by just specifying the differences with the base scenario. EventStudio manages the scenario definitions and generates the documents by merging the base scenario with the specified differences for each scenario.

EventStudio automatically handles diagram layout, formatting, scaling and page breaks for sequence diagrams and collaboration diagrams generated in the Adobe PDF and Microsoft Word Picture (EMF) formats. This allows the developers to focus on system architecture and design, without getting bogged down by document layout issues.

What's new in EventStudio System Designer 4.0?

EventStudio 4.0 comes with over 30 new features, according to he release.

The new release adds the ability to generate diagrams at different levels of abstraction. This aids in understanding a complex system. A developer can start with a high level sequence diagram to get a birds-eye-view of the system and then increase the level of detail as his or her understanding develops.

EventStudio adds support for UML style modeling of object interactions. Method invocation and return is directly supported in the modeling language. EventStudio also checks for design errors in object interactions.

A preprocessor is now included in the modeling language. The preprocessor promotes design reuse by specifying common portions of a design in include files. Macros may be defined to represent commonly repeated message sequences.

EventStudio 4.0 allows greater control over the layout and formatting of sequence diagrams. Color, line pattern and font of an element in the sequence diagram can be changed using the style specification. The style specification can also be applied to specify the formatting and images for sequence diagram columns.

Several features have been added to enhance the user experience. EventStudio now supports single click synchronization between PDF documents and the developer's model. Predefined templates and themes enable users to get started quickly. The users may also define their own templates, thus helping enforce a common format for all documents.

In addition to the above features, EventStudio adds support for several new statements, the release says. Actions involving multiple entities may be specified using the joint action statement. A heading statement allows the user to part the sequence diagram into multiple sections. Bidirectional message interactions can now be depicted with a single statement.

System requirements:

EventStudio 4.0 runs under the Windows 2000/XP/Vista platforms. It requires 10 MB of disk space. The free Adobe Acrobat Reader is needed to view PDF files.