The latest progress...

[Leon Starr]

For those interested, here's a quick timeline of progress on *UML.

The version of the *UML editor hasn't changed in a while, so the
latest version is still on SourceForge.
It runs on Windows, and the next version I post will run on the Mac
(my new platform) as well as Linux and then Windows again as the 3rd
priority.

But there isn't any point in extending the editor until we get a firm
action language metamodel. I'm hoping to have an update on that in
the coming months. Afterwards we can build an editor that acts on
that metamodel.

The *UML editor was designed on top of MySQL, but I took great care to
isolate the MySQL interface to a very thin layer. My plan is to move
over to TclRAL designed by my colleague Andrew Mangogna. TclRAL is an
in-memory relational database that's fast and, very important to me,
enforces relational constraints rigourously. Since TclRAL is written
in Tcl it will be necessary to either port the Python code to Tcl, or,
more likely, to create a Python/Tcl bridge. I am programming in both
Tcl and Python these days, so I will do whatever is easiest. (Do a
google search on TclRAL and it should lead you to the sourceforge
0.8.5 version if you want to play with it).

Andrew is working on an object-oriented layer to sit on top of the
relational stuff. We will bind that to the action language metamodel
(when I get it done!) and voila! an executable action language, at
least as far as data navigation should emerge. Hopefully we can make
serious progress on all these fronts by the end of this year!

I would love to move faster on the action language metamodel, but it
has to take a back seat to paying clients, thus it's a hobby for me.

When I re-initiate work on the metamodel, I will start posting again
on my *UML blog.