It installs as a menu on the Doors menubar, and provides for editing and analysing a set of UML-style use cases. Metrics and checklists are provided. There is a strong emphasis on requirements elicitation with easily-understood graphics, generated automatically. The toolset is closely integrated with Doors allowing for complete flexibility in filtering, traceability and reporting. The site also offers tools for editing a range of software engineering diagrams and for related functions such as filtering and constructing Doors templates.
Tools cover design and testing as well as requirements.
The examples on the website include radar and aircraft carrier, so there is a perceptible military-industrial orientation. Slate is apparently genuinely object-oriented and as such should suit large industrial projects that want to use OO analysis and design. Some systems engineers see Slate as a tool that mainly supports the life-cycle after the requirements phases. It provides limited support for requirements capture. It seems to be well liked on large projects which still use Framemaker in a world increasingly dominated by Microsoft.