Simon’s Blog

If you develop in Java, and you’re looking for an IDE that provides great, round trip UML support, you need look no further than Sun Java Studio Enterprise 8. It’s built on Netbeans 4.1… and best of all, it’s free.

I think the price tag of “free” is a great deal. I used to license a leading roundtrip Java-UML tool which cost over $50,000 to provide just a handful of floating licenses. Actually, that used to be good value for money, in terms of the productivity enhancements it allowed: UML is great for helping developers think at different levels of abstraction about the problems they’re trying to solve, and so helps them design great software. However, a zero cost tool is hell of a lot better than one that costs $50,000, assuming they are of equivalent quality. And, having played with Java Studio Enterprise for a little while, I’m pleased to report that it’s easy to learn, and easy to use; it’s right up there with the best UML modelling tools around.

Having a high-quality, free roundtrip Java-UML editor available gives all developers who use Java, the opportunity to take advantage of the benefits that UML brings to complex projects. And, better than being “yet another IDE”, this one is built on top of one of the existing leading IDEs, Netbeans. So, credit where credit is due: thanks to everyone at Sun who was involved in making this product available at no cost to developers.