Tool for Reverse Engineering ASP.NET to Web Application Extension (WAE) UML Profile in SPARX Enterprise Architect

We have added a new download to the Software Process Engineering Web site which is used to reverse Engineering ASP.NET applications to the Web Application Extension (WAE) UML Profile in SPARX Enterprise Architect.


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Overview
I often find that part of my assignment is to reverse engineer an application in order to modernize it, or to simply add new functionality to it.

ASP.NET has a UML Profile called the Web Application Extension Profile that can be used to present your architecture in a visual representation.

One thing to point out before you begin is that the reversed engineered code is only structured as good as the structure built into the code. Meaning if everything is in one namespace and one folder, you get one big folder with everything in it. Reverse engineering takes work. There is no magic tool that will make your code less confusing and give you perfectly laid out UML diagrams and there never will be. This is a big misconception I have come across a lot in my career.

I have been using this profile for some time now. I have Visio templates available here, and SPARX EA pattern templates available here. SPARX EA now includes the UML WAE (Web Application Extension) Profile as part of the default installation.

This download includes some tools to make it easier. It including a small application that generates some shell files that are then imported into SPARX EA giving you a great head start on what can be a very long road on certain projects.

The download includes the following files:

• ASP.NET to WAE UML Readme.doc- This is a step by step guide to using the ASPnet2UML.exe application and SPARX EA to reverse engineering ASP.NET to Web Application Extension (WAE) UML Profile.
  
• ASPnet2UML.exe- An application used to generated the extra files need to layout an architecture using WAE.
  
• ASPnet2UML.eap- A start up project used to show some of the features in the ASP.NET to WAE UML Readme.doc
  
• WAEEAPatterns.zip These are patterns we made available in an earlier download. We included them as a convenience.
  
• ASP2UMLImportComponentTypes.xml-The Import Component Types shown in the ASP.NET to WAE UML Readme.doc.

You can get it here.