JavaForge Project: Open ModelSphere - a data, process and UML modeling tool

This article is the second post in our new series that introduces notable JavaForge projects and community members. See the previous post about JPlay here.

Would like your project to be introduced here? Just tweet a message with the #javaforge hashtag to @intland, and we will get back to you.

In this post, we would like to introduce you is Open ModelSphere, a powerful data, process and UML modeling tool.

Interviewee Profile

Name: Grandite
Bio: Grandite is the "Business Modeling and Software Engineering Company". Based on a history and experience of 20 years in this sector, our team provides solid tools for data, business process and UML modeling as well as for engineering and reengineering databases and applications. Product-related services for technical support, training, consulting and development-on-demand complement our portfolio.
Location: Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
Web site: http://www.modelsphere.org (professional services: http://www.modelsphere.com)

The Open ModelSphere Project (Website)

What is your project about?

Open ModelSphere is about further developing a business process, data and UML modeling tool that already reached a degree of maturity as proprietary software before. Open ModelSphere is a free and open source application programmed in Java.

How are people using your project in real life?

Open ModelSphere is used by organizations of all sizes and industries to model stand-alone applications as well as to build their enterprise architecture. Users can easily create graphical representations of free databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL via ODBC / JDBC access. For commercial databases like Oracle, Informix and DB2 UDB, Grandite offers payable interfaces off- the-shelf. As opposed to the limited scope of a native ODBC / JDBC connection, these additional ready-to-use interfaces support a wide range of database-specific concepts for forward and reverse engineering as well as for the synchronization of databases.
Professional client organizations profit from our service packages that provide them unlimited access to our Technical Support and assure them of a fast response in case that a bug needs to be fixed. If clients require additional features, we provide the service to develop enhancements on demand.

Your biggest challenge?

Since ModelSphere was a grown application, designed and developed as proprietary software, we had to adjust the structure, code and documentation to fulfill the requirements of the GPL license (which we chose as the most appropriate for our purpose) as well as to attract external developers.

Your biggest achievement?

We believe that we are still on an ongoing "mission", so we better think in challenges than in achievements. However, we are delighted about the interest brought to Open ModelSphere from all over the world. The number of visitors on ModelSphere's web site, the number of downloads and - last, but not least - the number of clients have continuously increased, since we published Open ModelSphere as free software in September 2008.

Can you tell us about the team?

The core team comprises 3 senior developers who have an excellent Java expertise as well as the long-term experience in the development of another commercial product for business process and data modeling (SILVERRUN). There is also a changing number of additional members assigned to subprojects.

How do you coordinate the project and communicate with members?

We arrange meetings once to twice per year between the senior developers and Grandite's management to match the aspects of business, market and technology. Furthermore, the senior members meet whenever there is the necessity to discuss technical issues in person rather than by electronic communication. Each of the senior developers is also a tutor for less experienced members and/or external developers who wish to contribute to the application. To ensure the quality of the application, the access to update the JavaForge environment is limited to the 3 senior developers.

Your future directions?

The roadmap for 2010 includes support for additional user interfaces whereas we primarily consider German and Spanish. We believe that this will strengthen our position in Europe and South America and, in a next step, encourage developers from other areas of the world to translate the user interface into their languages, may be even those with non-Latin character sets.
Another important task for 2010 is to verify that Open ModelSphere is actually platform- independent, i.e. will not only run on Windows operating systems, but is also portable to Linux and Mac OS environments without any restriction. We consider this to be a crucial step, as organizations, that seek to use free application software, have already adopted Linux at large scale.
In the mid-to-long term, we like to leave the future directions for Open ModelSphere to an organized user community and take our position as their service provider.

Are you looking for contributors? If so, how can others contribute?

Yes, we are looking for contributors, in particular people that are interested to test Open ModelSphere in a Linux (Ubuntu) and/or Mac OS environment. Other than that, we are open for any ideas, and any qualified contribution is welcome.

Experiences with JavaForge

Why did you choose JavaForge?

We chose JavaForge first and foremost, because it is a hosting site for Java applications, and we want to interest other Java developers for our project. When we found that JavaForge offers the expected user features, our decision was taken.

Strengths of JF?

JavaForge is easy to administrate, in particular, we appreciate the flexible way of creating user profiles.

Weaknesses of JF?

We encountered some downtime of JavaForge at the beginning, but this is obviously eliminated.

What SCM system are you using?

We chose Subversion as our SCM system, and we especially like the "Tortoise" plug-in (for Windows Explorer) which is easy to install and to use.

What would you advise to someone thinking about starting a project on JavaForge?

Our project naturally fits into the JavaForge environment, and we believe that this will apply to the vaste majority of projects. Therefore, we do not have any particular advice how to start a project on JavaForge, but to focus on the "business" questions, i.e. is there a public interest in your project, whom do you want to reach, how do you organize your project, how do you intend to integrate external contributors etc.

Posted at 11:34AM Mar 22, 2010 by Intland Team in Customer Stories  |