Class Designer in Visual Studio 2005 will not support UML
As Ramesh writes in an old post, the Class Designer is not a UML tool but uses the notation. He goes on to say the prime audience for this tool is the Developer then what do the Architects use? Is there a different version? I personally am a bit cheesed off by this. I love UML and have used it extensively and know the value (and pains) it can bring, like with everything else there are pros and cons. Like I said in mu comment, what is Microsoft's issue in supporting UML? Is it more politics since Rational was bought by IBM or is there some other “real” reason?
I work for a large Systems Integrator and we are also one of the largest global MS partners. A lot of the clients I am involved with have almost every technology/platform running somewhere on their network and a very small percentage are only Microsoft. So, if this is something proprietary which I as an Architect cannot "integrate" with other pieces of a complex enterprise application that maybe running on J2EE then why would I want to use this?
What happened to all the “No Application is an Island” push? Was it only a marketing ploy? The other question is, Rational (or now IBM) will be improving Rose/XDE to counter Microsoft's threat to their dominance in this market, and if that does support UML then why would I not use that?
Thoughts?