Easiest Way To Create UML Sequence Diagrams

Posted May 22, 2009 * Comments(3)

In need of creating various UML Sequence Diagrams and in no mood to deal with Visio or its other graphical editor ilk, I did some research and ended up at a really nice solution.

What I wanted was to be able to specify my sequence using a simple text description and have a tool turn that into a sequence diagram. What I found was a tool called Sequence by Alex Moffat that does exactly that. The syntax takes a minute to get used to, but once you see what’s going on it’s very easy to use. The generated images are reasonably attractive and easily exportable to png, gif, etc.

Here’s a sample of the syntax:


objectOne.methodOne {
  objectTwo.methodTwo -> value {
    objectThree.methodThree -> anotherValue;
    objectFour.methodFour->finalValue;
  }
}

And here’s the resulting diagram:

UML Sequence Diagram

Once you download the jar and run it hit the “Help” option and look at the examples. They’re self explanatory and fairly complete.

3 Comments so far

  1. SoftModeling on May 23rd, 2009

    There are others tools that do similar things. For instance, you could take a look at the yUML (http://yUML.me)tool. Other tools are described here: http://modeling-languages.com/blog/content/textual-notationslanguages-define-uml-models-list-tools

    Hope you find it useful

  2. Alex on May 26th, 2009

    I think you forgot to put the link to the download page for Sequence

  3. Parand on May 26th, 2009

    The download is hidden in the “Sequence by Alex Moffat” link, scroll down the page and you’ll see it.

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