Hi Skip,
I'm using Rational
Rose 98. I got a trial copy of it (30 days) on the back of Mark Grand's
Java design
Pattern's book. I learned it using the excellent movie-based tutorial that comes with it (although that part has to be downloaded). It makes generation of sequence diagrams trivial. Also, it runs on my limited 64 meg machine, which the newer versions don't. You may have to export it to gif or jpg format (whichever one is smaller) to upload it.
On the sequence diagrams'low priority in the scoring, my guess is that Sun just wants a very general overall feel for the program flow, just the very major messages. A programmer will probably have a lot of latitude for manipulating all the exact messages.
It looks liek ithey just want to make sure that you follow along
with the MVC architecture, and properly divide components between
the various tiers.
Regrards,
Mark