Usability of Rational Rose and Visio in a software engineering course

ABSTRACT

Rational Rose (Rose) and Microsoft Visio (Visio) are the two commonly used UML modeling tools in software engineering courses. In the fall of 2002, a project to evaluate the usability of Rose and Visio for UML modeling in an undergraduate software engineering class was started. Through a questionnaire survey, student experiences of using Rose and Visio for UML modeling were collected and analyzed. This paper outlines our findings from the research project, tool features, diagram creation, available documentation, multi-tasking ability and produced output.

REFERENCES

• 1: Bennett, S. Skelton, J, Lunn, K, (2001). UML; Schaums Outlines.
• 2: Grady Booch , James Rumbaugh , Ivar Jacobson, The Unified Modeling Language user guide, Addison Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Redwood City, CA, 1999
• 3: James Rumbaugh , Ivar Jacobson , Grady Booch, The Unified Modeling Language reference manual, Addison-Wesley Longman Ltd., Essex, UK, 1998
• 4: Alistair Cockburn, Writing Effective Use Cases, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 2000
• 5: Jacobson, I. Ericsson, M, Jacobson, A. (2001). The Objective Advantage; Addison Wesley.
• 6: Ian Sommerville, Software Engineering, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1989
• 7: http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/Help/software/environments/rose.html
• 8: www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~gssahota/397/document.doc

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  J. Computer Applications
  J.1 ADMINISTRATIVE DATA PROCESSING
      Subjects: Education

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.0 General

General Terms:
Design, Documentation, Experimentation

Keywords:
experience, rational rose, survey results, usability, visio, visual modeling