As a big fan of LaTeX, I really enjoyed learning and using PlantUML in class. For those of you who do not know what UML is, UML stands for the Unified Modeling Language which is a language that allows us to create models/diagrams. It is commonly used to create some sort of visual to convey information to an audience. In class, we used PlantUML to show the relationship between classes but there are still a lot of things you can do with the language that we did not have time to cover in class.
In this first blog post by Rachel Appel, she goes over most of what we covered in class at a slightly slower pace.
In addition to covering what was covered in class, in her blog post, Ms. Appel also shows another way of using PlantUML diagrams. She shows us how to create USE diagrams. USE diagrams allow us to describe the relationship between users (or actors in Ms. Appel’s USE diagram) and the software and its components. I find this especially useful when describing to others the principle of user privilege or even from a managerial standpoint describing to your employees what information or resources, they have access to.
In the previous blog post, it talked about what kinds of diagrams you can make using PlantUML, and in this blog post, it talks about some style choices you can make in your diagrams and informs you about some features in PlantUML to organize your diagram.
https://www.codit.eu/blog/plantuml-tips-and-tricks/?country_sel=be
The blog post talks about many different features you can find in PlantUML. It talks about how to change the direction of the arrows, changing the box shape, changing the arrow color, and even adding a legend at the end of the diagram. The next topic that the post talks about text alignment and adding a background to your diagram. The post also talks about a couple of other really cool features you can do in PlantUML so be sure to give the post a quick read!
I picked this topic to do this week because it was in fresh in my mind after talking about it with one of my professors. It is also a topic that I found really interesting when we covered it in class at the beginning of the semester and is something I always wanted to learn more about. In the past, whenever I had to create a model for another class I used LaTeX, Excel and/or MatLab to generate the diagram and sometimes I had to jump through so many hoops to get the diagram to look the way that I wanted to. With PlantUML, there are a lot of built-in features that I can choose from and use so I can see myself using this knowledge in another class.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Just a Guy Passing By by Eric Nguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.