At today's meeting we discussed the possibility of using one of the most popular UML tools, Enterprise Architect, to generate JADN schemas, based on the fact that JADN's design is based on UML.
Even though they quote UML's description:
"The UML offers a standard way to write a system's blueprints, including conceptual things such as business processes and system functions as well as concrete things such as programming language statements, database schemas, and reusable software components."
for some unknown reason Enterprise Architect does not support data models, including database schemas and information modeling languages like JADN and ASN.1, which are based on UML Simple DataType classifiers. The closest approximation would be EA's "Logical or Class Model":
"The Class Model is at the core of object-oriented development and design - it expresses both the persistent state of the system and the behavior of the system."
which brings in the complexity of object-oriented programming. Data (documents and messages) are not programs, they do not have methods, interfaces, or "services to manipulate object state (behavior). Crucially for logical data modeling, DataTypes support translation of logical to physical (lexical) data while Classes do not – classes cannot be serialized, and asking for the hash of a class a meaningless question. So while data model diagrams can be faked using class diagrams (using any drawing application), EA does not support modeling the capability of UML DataTypes.
I'm working on slides contrasting NIEM's class modeling approach with JADN's information (logical data) modeling. JADN's UML heritage will go in the JADN spec, but I'm not sure how much of would be educational rather than confusing in the CN.
David