Evaluation of UML tools for model-driven architecture

Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) is about separating the specifications of the system from the platform the system is running on. This is done by presenting the system with one or more Unified Modeling Language (UML) models that may present different levels of abstraction. The change from one model to another is called transformation. In this paper, thirteen commercial and open-source UML tools were evaluated to find the most suitable one for realizing quality-driven architecture model transformation. The actual evaluation comprised two separate stages. First, the tools were studied from vendors’ website to find the most promising tools for further study. Second, three the most promising tools were selected for trial. In this stage, support for MDA and extensibility were observed. Ultimately Telelogic Tau/Developer was considered the most suitable tool mainly because it was the only one supporting platform independent development