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Home :: Products :: ConceptDraw V :: Study :: Development of software with the help of ConceptDraw

Development of software with the help of ConceptDraw

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Use it for::

  • visual object-oriented design
  • flowcharts
  • designing GUI
  • management of development projects
  • automation of projecting and development
  • visualization of data
  • DB design and visualization of DB data

ConceptDraw is a tool for technical and business graphics. It provides specialists who create graphic documentation in the course of work with a possibility to focus not on the process of drawing but on the essence of the task. For this ConceptDraw features a huge number of ready-to-use objects (4590 for the moment of writing the article), smart connectors, layers, hyperlinks and many other possibilities.

Modern development of program software leads to a large amount of graphic documentation: diagrams, describing the work of applications in various cuts and notations, GUI design, documentation on project management. Each of these fields is represented by topical libraries and templates.

To ConceptDraw V new possibilities have been added, thanks to which the program became a sequence more useful for developers. The most considerable novelties are:

  • a set of wizards which automate widespread tasks
  • the inbuilt scripting language, which helps to automate tasks specific for your particular situation.

Let us consider the typical applications.

Benefits:

  • topical templates and libraries with ready-to-use shapes
  • topical wizards
  • powerful graphic possibilities (2D-graphics)
  • smart connectors
  • support of hyperlinks
  • numerous export formats
  • scripting language ConceptDraw Basic
  • possibility of using external shared libraries
  • 4 open text formats
  • XML support
  • support of ODBC-compatible databases
  • multilateral parameterization of objects
  • cross-platform compatibility (Mac, PC)

Object-oriented design

UML Class diagram

For the recent years object-oriented methodology has become more and more widespread. Thanks to this methodology developers manage to deal with the growing complexity of applications. More and more programs are written on such programming languages as C++, Java, Visual Basic and Object Pascal. However, the complexity of the designed systems imposes extended requirements as to design of graphic documentation. ConceptDraw possesses powerful tools for designing of technical documentation for object-oriented projects. The libraries included in the package allow to easily draw class hierarchies, object hierarchies and diagrams of data flows with the use of the most popular notations, including UML and Booch notations. And the library for projecting of COM-interfaces will spare the developers of ActiveX-servers a headache.

 

Flowcharts of algorithm and business-processes

flowchart Flowcharting is a conventional way of recording algorithms in a graphic form. ConceptDraw is an ideal means for their creation. Easiness of drawing of flowcharts in ConceptDraw is really impressive. This functionality is espacially useful for students and teachers of informatics.
DataFlow At development of real applications flowcharts are widely used for clearing processes on which business-logics of the application will be based.

 

Prototyping Graphical User Interface (GUI)

Prototyping Graphical User Interface ConceptDraw allows to more tightly connect art designers, managers and users to the process of GUI design. Now the libraries of controls for Windows 95, Windows XP, MacOS and MacOS X are available to all of them and they can share with the developers their vision of windows, menu and web-forms on various platforms...

 

Project management

Gantt chart

For one big program project to be completed successfully it should be thoroughly projected. One of the generally recognized and visual tools for projecting and tracking timeliness of the works on the project - Gantt chart. ConceptDraw offers the wizard for automatic creation of Gantt chart.

The other side of the question of project management is the dynamism of changes. Changes in the project and its documentation are made daily. All updates should be done in time and be available to each developer. ConceptDraw offers many ways for solving this question:

  • Cross platform compatibility. ConceptDraw is released in versions for PC and for Mac. Its files are easily read by the both versions. It means you can exchange documents with your colleagues and partners working on different platforms.
  • Export to HTML provides the possibility of getting a set of ready web-pages based on a ConceptDraw file, which can be displayed for all interested in Intranet or Internet.
  • Export to PDF and graphic formats are designed, first of all, for sending information by E-mail.

 

Automation of the process of management and development

Presently ConceptDraw supports text formats for description of the document structure: Outline and Flow Data. ConceptDraw V supports XML. XML for ConceptDraw has been created and, at the same time, support of import XML for Visio. All this allows to develop solutions for automating of various aspects of software development.

For instance:

  • generation of UML diagrams etc. on the ready initial code
  • generation of the initial code
  • generation of resources for Windows and MacOS, web-forms
  • and many other

 

Visualization of data

ConceptDraw is a good means for visualization of information of any kind. The program features powerful graphic possibilities. Thus, on the ready graphic kernel ConceptDraw the rest products of the line have been developed: ConceptDraw Project, ConceptDraw MINDMAP, ConceptDraw Presenter. This powerful graphic kernel (2D-graphics) is supported by a number of open formats (including XML). Add to this the flexibility of data processing, connected with the scripting language ConceptDraw Basic (appeared in version V), and also the flexibility in parameterization of objects, which is provided by the whole table of the object parameters (which is available for editing even from the program's interface). So it becomes clear in the end that visualizing of information in ConceptDraw is a good idea.

So, the typical task for ConceptDraw Basic is to automate the visualization of some data. This data can be obtained as the result of work of an arbitrary application (including ConceptDraw-script) and saved in a text file, ODBC-compatible database or in one of the open formats supported by ConceptDraw. In the first two cases, data will further be read and visualized with the help of ConceptDraw Basic. In case of using a ConceptDraw open format (Flow Data Format, Outline, XML for ConceptDraw or XML for Visio) the obtained document can be simply opened in ConceptDraw, you can then add some details of design and get a presentable diagram. Possibilities of ConceptDraw Basic considerably increase at using in script the functions exported by the shared libraries.

The conclusion is: ConceptDraw is a platform worth considering for writing solutions, connected with data visualization.

 

Work with databases

Sample Database Layout

Specific attention has been given to work with databases. There are libraries for designing of databases in various notations: ORM, Chen ERD and Martin ERD, Express-G and relational diagrams. Starting from version V, ConceptDraw supports ODBC-compatible databases. Interaction with them is possible with the help of scripting language ConceptDraw Basic. Besides, in ConceptDraw Professional package there is the wizard Database Model Diagram (it can be found among the templates of the section ERD & Database). It builds a model of an arbitrary presented by the user in the form of DSN database.

Having applied all said above about possibilities of ConceptDraw in fields of projection, automation and visualization of data, we can conclude, that the program is well designed for solving the following tasks:

  • designing of databases
    • ORM-diagrams
    • ER-diagrams
    • relational diagrams
  • reengineering of databases
  • visual displaying of data in the form of charts and diagrams

 

Additional materials

For more details on various applications of ConceptDraw for solution developers read the articles:

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