Poseidon for UML: User Guide
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# Chapter 2. Editions

Poseidon for UML is delivered in different editions. This section gives a rough overview of the editions so that you may decide which of these is most appropriate for you.

Poseidon for UML is directly based on ArgoUML (version 0.8) and you will find that what is described here closely resembles ArgoUML. However, Poseidon for UML is more mature, provides additional features, and is more stable. It is intended for daily work in commercial and professional environments. ArgoUML, on the other hand, is open source and lends itself to research, study of architectures, and extensibility. If you want to get your hands on the code and help advance the open source project, we greatly encourage you to do so. In that case, we recommend you to turn to the web site www.argouml.org.

Poseidon for UML is released in Versions as well as in Editions. All Editions are based on the same source base and therefore carry the same version number. New versions are released a couple of times per year. This document refers to version 4.x, although most of the information is relevant for versions 2.0 and later.

The Editions offer different features and come with different levels of support.

# Community Edition

The Community Edition is the base version. Offered for free, it is the zero-barrier entry to the world of UML for the individual software developer as well as for large organizations. It makes learning and using UML a snap and enables the cost-effective exchange of models.

It is fully usable for modeling UML, and you may use it for any non-commercial purpose, particularly for educational uses. It contains all UML diagrams and all implemented diagram elements. You can create, save, and load projects, browse existing models, exchange models, generate Java code, export your diagrams to various formats and much more. You may freely distribute it, put it on local or Internet servers, and distribute it on CDs or DVDs. Gentleware does not provide support for the Community Edition.

Generally speaking, the Community Edition provides everything you need to learn and to use UML at a non-professional level. However, there are a few restrictions. Some of the features that are available in the commercial editions are not included in the free Edition. These features are nice to have to increase your productivity, but are not necessarily required to build UML models. Perhaps most important, the Community Edition does not support reverse or round-trip engineering, and it cannot load plug-ins. The other Editions meet the requirements of professional users.

The Community Edition has the following features:

- Fully implemented in Java, platform independent.

- All 9 diagrams of the UML are supported.

- Compliant to the UML 2.0 standard.

- XMI 1.2 is supported as a standard saving format. XMI 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 can be loaded.

- Diagram export as gif, ps, eps and svg.

- Graphic formats jpeg and png supported for JDK 1.4.

- Copy/cut/paste.

- Some diagrams allow drag and drop within the tool.

- Internationalization and localization for English, German, French, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese.

- Forward engineering for Java.

- Simple installation and updates with Java Web Start.

- Full Undo and Redo.

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