Rational first to market with UML data modelling

Rational Software, the e-development company, has announced the industry`s first unified modelling language (UML)-based data modelling and analysis offerings. Rational Rose Data Modeler, available separately or as part of Rational Suite AnalystStudio, allows business analysts, developers and data modelers to work together in one common methodology and notation to build higher quality e-business software in less time.

With the industry-wide adoption of UML, business analysts, systems analysts and developers have benefited from sharing a standard modelling language that improves team communication and simplifies the complex process of software design, says Themi Themistocleous, director of local Rational distributor, CCH Software Development.

"Until now, data modellers have worked independently from the rest of the software development team," observes Themistocleous. "This has often resulted in frustrating communication breakdowns that can cost a project valuable time and resources."

With Rational Rose Data Modeler, Rational is expanding on the success of Rational Rose for application development and business modelling and bringing it to the burgeoning data modelling market. With the addition of UML-based data modelling, Rational now offers a complete UML-based development environment.

Improved communication, faster learning

Rational Rose Data Modeler improves communication between the team members and reduces learning time, resulting in a more effective and efficient process for developing data-critical e-business applications, says Themistocleous.

"Rational Rose has become the industry standard for application development and business modelling," says Themistocleous. "Now, with the introduction of Rational Rose Data Modeler, Rational is bringing all the benefits of UML and e-development to data modellers to unify them with the rest of the software team."

This UML-based approach streamlines communication where deficiencies used to exist and enables teams collectively to develop a solid enterprise architecture. Rational Suite AnalystStudio, which includes Rose Data Modeler, provides data analysts with tools for problem analysis, system definition and requirements management in one integrated offering. Now all business, system and data requirements and models can be captured and managed collectively. Associations between them can be traced for easy change impact analysis.

Rational Suite AnalystStudio provides all analysts with the ability to analyse the problem space, define requirements for and model their business, system and data. In addition, analysts can manage those artefacts as they change throughout the project lifecycle.

With the inclusion of Rose Data Modeler, Rational Suite AnalystStudio now folds the data models and requirements into the complete project, unifying cross-functional team members into a collaborative force. Previously isolated members of the data team now have easy access to the data requirements in context of the whole project requirements, and can trace their data models through the application models and system use-case models to the associated requirement text and attributes.

"Using the UML for database modelling and design not only allows the communication to flow more freely and opens the barriers between teams, it provides a more sophisticated modelling environment," comments Themistocleous. "With the data model in the UML a data modeller can capture information such as constraints, triggers and indexes directly on the diagram rather then as hidden, tagged values. With this information modelled, users can communicate the database model in its entirety.

Other benefits

In addition to the benefits of implementing the UML for data modelling, Rational Rose Data Modeler provides the following capabilities:

• Object-relational mapping

  : Object-relational mapping offers users the ability to track the migration of an object model to a data model. This form of mapping gives users a way to gain a deep understanding of the relationships between the application and the database, and continue to keep them up to date based on changes made during the development process.

• Database round trip engineering

  : Round trip engineering of the data model and database allows users either to create a data model based on the database structures through forward engineering or to create a database based on the data model through reverse engineering. The schema can be generated directly against the database or saved as a script file for future implementation and will include tables, columns, constraints, indexes, triggers and more.

• Referential integrity

  : Referential integrity in Rose Data Modeler enforces the integrity of the database by automatically migrating primary keys as foreign keys to the child table. When a relationship is created, users have a choice of how to enforce the referential integrity, either through a trigger or declarative referential integrity. The referential integrity options are specific to the database and are only available when supported by the specific database vendor and version.

Industry-leading database companies endorse Rational`s announcement

"We are delighted to have Rational Rose Data Modeler support Oracle8i," says Jeremy Burton, VP Platform Marketing at Oracle. "Now software developers and database designers can work together in one modelling environment, leveraging the UML to unify modelling on e-business applications from the start of the project to the final database implementation."

"The addition of data modelling to Rational Rose enhances the existing application modelling capabilities of Rational Rose to further complement IBM VisualAge for Java," said Peter J Tarrant, IBM`s VP, e-business marketing. "This new capability from Rational will work with IBM`s Application Framework for e-business to provide a single, UML-based solution which will unify business analysts, data modellers and Java application developers building applications with DB2 Universal Database."

"Rational Rose Data Modeler is the only tool on the market today that uses the UML to bring all of the team members involved in the development process together," says Jon Roskill, director of SQL and Developer Tools marketing at Microsoft. "One of the many reasons we are working closely with Rational is based on the tremendous advantage this brings to developers using Visual Studio and Windows DNA to build Internet applications. Working together in one tool and notation for the first time, teams gain an improved understanding of the impact of changes to requirements, application models and data models on a project`s success."