Get Together

The latest version of Borland’s software design tool, Together 2006, provides a common visual language for both Business-Process Modelling and Model-Driven Architecture (MDA). Together is a UML-based graphical tool that can be used to generate code from a design, and keep graphics synchronised as the project develops.

Together 2006 unifies a number of platform-specific tools built on to the Eclipse 3.1 integration framework, making it possible to integrate Together into the Eclipse environment. It also extends the MDA approach via the query/view/transformation (QVT) specification, which enables users to perform model-to-model transformations, a key component of MDA. A model-driven architected system separates and insulates business and application logic from the underlying platform technology, by the creation of platform-independent models which are then transformed to platform-specific models (i.e. model-to-model transformations). It is said that with QVT support, MDA evolves from a conceptual philosophy to an achievable software practice.

Modelling is also extended into Business Process Modelling, which is becoming more popular and provides a way of visualising the often-complex workflows within an enterprise. Together now supports Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN), a graphical notation used to enable business process modelling in software development.

The latest release’s code quality control tools introduce model-level audits and metrics that can be used to gauge the overall quality of work and encourage the use of naming conventions and other best practices. The code-level audit includes Java best practices as well as simply computing metrics.