I believe there are tools out there that will analyze Java sources and create UML class diagrams from that. I believe TogetherJ or one of those 'all in one' tools can do that.
It is not a good way, because such diagrams contain a lot of dependencies which are not in the ``original'' diagrams. Moreover the tool cannot recognize what objects are important and what objects would be excluded from the diagrams.
I fully agree that nothing can beat a handcrafted UML diagram, made by someone who knows which details are irrelevant for the key concepts. That's what the models are for - to present a complex reality in an abstract, simplified way, by disregarding things that are not important for the purpose of explaining the concept...
However, automated tools still can go a long way, especially if you don't have time or expertise to create diagrams on your own, with unknown code base...
In my experience, for creating class diagrams tools like TogetherJ do acceptable job when used to automatically reverse-engineer existing source code. But in the case of sequence diagrams they are just pathetic... You'll have a chance to see two of them in the package I sent to Otis. :-)
-- Best regards, Andrzej Bialecki
------------------------------------------------- Software Architect, System Integration Specialist ------------------------------------------------- FreeBSD developer (http://www.freebsd.org)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
