Most software developers familiar with object oriented development processes and practices know the benefits of UML. The Unified Modeling Language provides an effective way of visualizing and documenting the artifacts of a software system to be developed. With time, UML has become the de-facto standard in the development of object oriented software, being used throughout the software development life cycle. Though called a language, the syntax of UML is purely graphical, and very easy to understand even for a non programmer. As of today, myriad of UML editors are available in the market which enable to create a model of the system to be developed in an effective way. Some of them are commercial software having advanced features, while others are freely available. 'Violet' is one such editor which is completely free, distributed under the GNU General Public License. A full fledged UML editor usually supports all types of UML diagrams, including all types of structural views, behavioral views and interaction views. However, 'Violet' supports only a limited subset of these, including Class Diagram, Sequence Diagram, State Diagram, Object Diagram and Use Case Diagram. It should be noted that the version that is used here is 0.16a. A more advanced version, 0.21 exists and may support other features and functionalities. It has a very simplistic interface and does the basic job quite well. Some basic editing tasks like cut, copy paste do not work in Violet. However, the interface is much faster than other heavyweights like "Rational Rose", and supports mouse driven element selection and drawing. Violet will run fine even in low end machines. All these makes Violet the UML editor of choice for students and casual users alike.
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