Tools for visual modeling languages support the creation of diagrams to capture the results of requirements analysis and to describe designs. But in addition these tools are becoming more and more complete programming tools that support generation of code from models and reverse engineering of models from code. See my page on UML tools for my preliminary answers to some of these questions. Open Source Open source is an alternative to traditional software development models that promises to improve the availability of software. I am interested whether the open source model can also be applied in the early stages of academic research projects.
Research projects tend to close their source in fear of giving away research secrets.
I experiment with this model in several research projects, including XT and Stratego .