IBM® Rational® UML
modeling products can be extended to address the specific needs of
an entire company, a project, or an individual user. An extensibility
effort can be as simple as defining some additional properties or
as advanced as defining an entire new plug-in.
The extensibility features in the Rational UML modeling products are packaged
as an optional product component that must be installed in order to
access the documentation and examples referenced below. These extensibility
features build on the open-source Eclipse components to support a
variety of efforts, including the following typical extensions:
- Properties and stereotypes to capture project-specific information
- Constraints to validate the consistency of your model
- Patterns to automate application of design and architectural patterns
- Transformations to transform your model data to source code or
other metamodels
- Script-like programs, such as pluglets, to access and modify model
information
- Programs to extract model information for purposes such as reporting,
metrics, and export
- Programs to populate model information from other sources, including
other development tools
- Eclipse plug-ins that use model information to further enhance
the workbench or your custom perspectives and views
All of the above examples use a combination of application programming
interfaces (APIs), extension points, specialized development environments,
and utilities. Review the extensibility components provided by Eclipse
and the Rational UML modeling
products to learn how to implement your extensions.