MagicWand

Description

The MagicWand is a set of plug-ins for MagicDraw that provide small but useful modeling utilities - we call them charms. ;-)

History

MagicWand evolved from the ModelReporter, the result of the completed Master's thesis of Magnus Magnusson, extending MagicDraw's built-in reporting tool.

Charms

"Charm" is our term for each of the many little useful tools that are included in MagicWand. By themselves, the might not look like much, but together, they are quite an arsenal.

Code Annotation

With a view to code generation, we also allow to annotate model elements by code. We offer a syntax-enabled editor with a choice of common programming languages that simplifies editing greatly by features like color-highlighting, bracket-completion, and auto-indentation.

Diagram Size

Coming soon! This charm computes the size of diagrams, and provides advice with a nice visualizaton.

Prose Annotations

With a view to creating rich reports from UML models, this charm allows to offers portfolio of report templates. The outcome is very similar to the look and structure of the LMS-report, our standard modeling case study. The reports include some basic size metrics, and allow rich annotation of the sub models that are included in report generation. For instance, an introductory description for the information model can be expressed as a structured comment in the respective package of the UML. Generating the report will analyse all such comments and place their contents in the appropriate place of the report. Creating the report uses MagicDraw's built-in reporting facilities, and is used exactly like them.

Quantitative Annotations

With a view to quantitative models (e.g., performance, cost, or effort-models) this charm allows to define annotation with units for model elements. To make for richer models, annotations may also be typed and defaulted, and some basic cardinality constraints may be expressed. These annotations are fully configurable, and may be extended conservatively by modelers on-the-fly.

Review Annotations

With a view to inspecting models in a structured review process (e.g., Fagan-style inspections), this charm allows to attach comments to model elements and equip them with a reviewer id and a severity. The comments may be deleted, exported to the format understood by the FIT tool so that they can be controlled efficiently. Uploading a comment file allows to spread a review, and uploaded more than one comment-files combines them into unified view of all comments on a model. There is also a function for listing all review comments in a model, e.g. when considering rework assignments.

Spectrographic Analysis

This charm computes the concept spectrum used in a model or a user-selected sub-model and visualizes it as a histogram. Various filters and aggregators can be applied, and total numbers of elements, attributes, and diagrams are computed, too.

Types/Templates

Coming soon! This charm infers the (structural) type of model and its submodels, and checks it against an external type. This way, a declaratively specified structural template can be checked/enforced effectively.

Web Services

With a view to future extensions and features implemented in incompatible technologies, there is a plug-in that connects to web services and allows to call them on arbitrary servers on the internet. Currently, results will only be processed by a local browser, but extensions are in preparation.

Getting Started

Download

Document name	Type	Description	Download
MagicWand	Executable	The current MagicWand distribution, including all charms.	Download MagicWand for MD 17.0.3
MagicWand	Manual	The complete manual of the current MagicWand distribution, covering all charms.

Installation

MagicWand requires MagicDraw 17.0.3 or 18.0 to be installed. MagicWand comes as a zip with a installation instruction and one directory for each charm. These directories are simply placed in the respective MagicDraw directory $MD/plugins. Then, MagicDraw needs to be (re)started and for some of the charms, set-up actions are required.

Documentation

The MagicWand comes with a basic manual. There are also some video tutorials available online. There are currently no scientific papers on MagicWand.