Astah plugin ideas

The following repository contains all the ideas that we came up for Astah, a great modeling tool. If you would like to implement any of these ideas, feel free to contact me, I am happy to support you.

Import schema structure from SQL database

Import schema structure from an SQL database into Astah.

UML Profile editor plugin [done]

• See: https://github.com/modeldriven-hu/astah-profile

Currently Astah SysML is not able to create custom profiles with tags, only internal profiles, however, it is able to import external profiles. One way to create a profile is to use Eclipse UML, described on the following page:

https://wiki.eclipse.org/MDT/UML2/Introduction_to_UML2_Profiles

It would be beneficial to have the profile editing capability inside Astah, instead of needing to open a 3rd party tool.

• Create a new profile
• Load profile from file
• Save profile to file
• Add stereotypes to the profile
• Set metaclass for stereotypes
• Add tags to stereotypes
• Set type for a tag
• Able to update a model file with changes, handle only addition, and not removal

Diagram helper plugin [done]

• See: https://github.com/modeldriven-hu/astah-easy-diagram

Everyone hates pixel pushing, it makes modeling so not fun. Let's make it more fun!

• Straighten line (remove additional point, keep only the start and end point)
• Input coordinates (display x,y coordinate, width and height, and allow modification of it by entering new values. Could keep also aspect ratio. Also could keep connection points.
• Snap to pixel

Rich text editor [partially done]

• See: https://github.com/modeldriven-hu/astah-rich-document

For documenting model elements Astah only provides a text area. In this plugin, when the user select a model element, the associated documentation would be visible in the rich text editor. When the user deselects a model element, then it the editor will be empty and disabled. When user selects multiple elements, the editor will be likewise empty and disabled.

Functions:

• bold
• italic
• align (left, right, center, justify)
• color (background, foreground)
• list
• numbering
• table
• link
• image?
• undo/redo support
• etc.

Legend [done]

-See: https://github.com/modeldriven-hu/astah-legend

In some diagrams we would like to color certain elements based on certain rules. The plugin could do the following:

• Define legend (name and legend items)
• Define legend item (text color, background color, etc. and the rule)
• Allocate a legend to one or multiple diagrams
• See which legends are allocated to the diagram
• Apply legend on the diagram

Plugin manager and plugin server

In a corporate environment it is really difficult to distribute plugins. The plugin manager allows users to download plugins from a configured repository on demand.

Functions:

• Server hosts plugin bundles
• Configure multiple plugin servers / repositories
• Nexus? Reposilite?
• List plugins
• Search for plugin
• Filter plugins by type
• Notify user when a new version of an installed plugin is available
• Check digital signature before install
• Use some well defined repository as source
• etc.

OpenAPI import [in progress]

When working with software systems often we need to integrate with API-s described in a form of OpenAPI (Swagger) specification. The OpenAPI import plugin would import an OpenAPI specification into the model.

Functions:

• OpenAPI file selector
• List available endpoints, allow selection only a subsets of endpoints
• Create interfaces, operations, requests, responses, etc.
• Customization: which is the counterpart of an OpenAPI concept (stereotype, etc.)

Generic table

We often need to list certain model elements and filter among them. The plugin would allow to display a list of elements of a certain type in a form of a table, probably under a package.

Functions:

• List elements of a certain package
• Select columns
• Filter elements based on a rule (groovy?)
• Find element in tree
• Create new model element (for example requirement)
• Export to CSV/Excel

Statistics

Display statistics of the model. Number of model elements, by type, number of diagrams, by type, etc.

OSLC support

This is a challenging but super interesting task. Add OSLC client support to Astah so that a connection to an OSLC server could be built up. A good starting point could be an integration to requirements part of the following reference implementation:
https://github.com/oslc-op/refimpl

Model import without Astah

Being able to offline import a model and run for example validation rules on it. It would be great if we could put a model in a CI/CD environment and have a git hook to run verification / model transformation.

HTML generation

Export a document into a HTML.

Model server

A model server could get a model file and serve it to various interfaces. OSLC, REST, etc. It could also support locking/version management.