Bulldozer00's Blog

When using a tool or technology that implements a universal standard, beware of inadvertently using non-standard extensions that “lock” you into the vendor’s revenue stream.

The graphic below shows a screenshot from Artisan Real-time Studio version 7.2. Even though the tool implements the UML 2.0 standard, notice that there are several “non-UML” diagrams that you can create: “Constraint Diagram“, “General Flow Diagram“, etc. If you choose to create and use these proprietary extensions, then you’re sh*t out of luck if you get pissed off at Atego and want to port your model over to a different UML tool vendor with a better and/or less expensive solution. D’oh! I hate when that happens.

I’m not trying to single out Atego here. Every commercial vendor, especially of expensive tools, bakes-in a few proprietary extensions to give them an edge over the competition. The sneakier ones don’t annotate or make obvious which features are proprietary – so beware.