Building an evaluation instrument for OO CASE tool assessment for Unified Modelling Language support

The Unified Modelling Language (UML) as delivered in September 1997 offers the structure and dynamics of its modelling constructs developed in order to standardise different object oriented (OO) development practices. Represented as a language, UML covers some aspects addressed by any methodology and is expected to be accompanied by OO CASE tools through notation and implementation of the UML philosophy. This paper discusses the problem of OO CASE tools as methodology companions that encourage or enforce methodology support. The basis for an evaluation instrument has been developed in order to analyse how commercially available OO CASE tools support the UML. The evaluation instrument is based on extraction of a set of rules that are supposed to be followed in order to claim that the UML itself is being followed. The rules are extracted from the current UML Semantics document and its well-formedness rules. The evaluation instrument is tested against a few OO CASE tools in order to analyse how it can be used on a larger scale for assessing the level of automation and UML support embedded in the tools.