UML/SysML Tool Vendor Model Interchange Test Case Results Now Available

Needham, MA – December 1, 2011 – OMG’s® Model Interchange Working Group (MIWG) announced the public availability of the vendor test case results that demonstrate their UML® and OMG SysML™ model interchange capability. Six tool vendors, including Atego, IBM, NoMagic, Sodius (supporting IBM Rhapsody), SOFTEAM, and Sparx Systems, supporting six tools, are participating in the model interchange testing using XMI® as the interchange standard. The test results encompass a test suite of sixteen test cases that provide test coverage of a majority of the commonly used UML and SysML functionality.

Sandy Friedenthal, chair of the MIWG, noted that “the ability to interchange models offers the potential to significantly improve productivity, quality, and the long term retention of models. The MIWG test suite demonstrates a broad interchange capability that includes the interchange of executable activity models, and the interchange of domain specific models using profiles.”

Most importantly, the vendor participants have worked together to make model interchange a success. Over a series of incremental releases of the MIWG test suite, vendors have collaboratively interchanged each of the MIWG tests between their tools, identified issues and resolved them in subsequent tool releases. As a result, the versions of these tools now on the market are far more interoperable than they were three years ago when the MIWG effort started.

Speaking as a group, the participating MIWG vendors agree that “the MIWG has demonstrated our OMG standards compliance and directly benefited our customers and partners with improved model interchange for more design flexibility. We are pleased to publish these test results to help organizations assess model interchange.”

Pete Rivett, Adaptive CTO and OMG Architecture Board member, added, “the test case reference XMI files have been hand-checked against both the UML and XMI specifications, and so provide a great resource for all tool developers and those interested in tool integration.”

The MIWG plans to continue interchange testing of additional features of UML and SysML and new versions of the modeling languages. In addition, it will begin interchange testing of the UML Profile for SOA (SoaML®) followed by the Unified Profile for DoDAF and MODAF (UPDM). Len Levine from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) notes, that “proven and reliable Interchange is critical for exchange of architecture and system modeling data among a diverse range of tools that support the Department of Defense. The OMG MIWG has accomplished successful interchange testing of the key features of UML and SysML using the XMI standard. This testing provides the foundation to ensure that the OMG UPDM, conforming to DoDAF as well as UML and SysML specifications, will efficiently and effectively interchange the needed information.”

The MIWG has recently focused on streamlining and enhancing the testing process to support increasing the number of test cases in the future. In particular, the MIWG introduced a constrained version of XMI called Canonical XMI to make it easier to assess the correctness of an XMI file, which has now been accepted as an official OMG specification. In addition, Peter Denno from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed a Validator tool to validate conformance of the exported XMI file to the corresponding modeling standards.

The MIWG is supported by members from the UML, SysML, and XMI community including Ed Seidewitz, Pete Rivett, and Roy Bell. “The hallmark of successful and useful standards is proven interoperability—proven with real-world use cases in real-world situations. The MIWG effort has been tremendously successful in providing just that proof,” said Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D., chairman and CEO, OMG.

Information on the test suite and how users can leverage the test suite to assess model interchange capability among vendors is available at the MIWG Wiki at http://www.omgwiki.org/model-interchange.

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Edited by Stephanie