Hi,
Its been nearly two years since I last used Rose so things may have changed. However, you may find some issues regarding alternative frames in the Sequence diagrams and component notation within packages.
I have had a great time trying to find a suitable UML tool. I started using Microsoft Visio with a UML template recommended by Martin Fowler. That worked great but the management of the diagrams was lost and required unnecessary excessive maintenance. The next was PosiedonCE but this was simply took too long to do anything. A simple class diagram felt like it took ages to do. Only my opinion but I found the UI terrible to use. The next after that I used TogetherDesignerCE. That was great but package diagrams could not be used in context with other UML notations (i.e. you could not allocate components within a package in the same view) and the Sequence diagrams were absent for UML 2.0. The professional TogetherDesigner is suppose to be great to use but, like Rose, very expensive for individuals to purchase. Next, I used Jude and found it very good as a freeware solution. I'm not sure why now, but I decided I wanted something a little better and ended up buying Visual Paradigm Modeler Edition. This is visually great but it doesn't support UML 2.0 completely (although it says it does - a little cheeky but most tools state the same thing) and is a little buggy.
After all this, I think sticking with Jude is the best approach (for me) but please note that this is UML 1.x. Although this should not be a problem because the
SCEA Instructions do not state what specification to use and I simply stated the specification version in my supporting documentation.
Regards,
Ian Roberts<br />Application Architect<br />SCJP, SCJD, SCEA, OCUP Fundamental
