Umple User Manual V1.38

Abstract

Umple is a tool for creating models of software and generating code in Java, Python, PHP, C++ and other languages. Umple’s language is textual, but many kinds of diagrams and other outputs can be generated and used to help edit the text; these including state machines, state tables, class diagrams, feature diagrams, entity-relationship diagrams, message sequence tables, and instance diagrams. Umple allows embedding of several requirements formats such as user stories and use cases; Umple helps users understand the relationships (traceability) from the requirements to models and code, and vice-versa. Umple can be used online, as a command-line tool or in many integrated development tools (IDEs) such as VSCode, Zed, Cursor or BBEdit. These tools use Umple's Language Server Protocol (LSP) capabilities to help people edit their text. Developers can make extensive use of the modeling notations (data models, state models), but also embed code in target languages such as Java or Python to complete their system. This enables direct generation of systems from the Umple textual source. Umple's online tools enable users to use artificial intelligence (AI) to build systems reliably: Users pick a set of requirements in Umple and ask any AI to build Umple models, that can be deterministically transformed into code.

This document is the pdf version of the Umple user manual as of version 1.38.0 (October 2025) and supersedes the 2021 version for version 1.30.2. Umple has been extensively improved since then, with numerous new capabilities. This version of the manual has over 890 pages and embeds over 550 examples. Most people will use the online html version of the manual, available at https://manual.umple.org, however some people prefer a printable or citable document. This document has the same content as the online version, and links will take readers to the online manual. All examples in the manual have links that open the example code in classic UmpleOnline at https://try.umple.org or a newer experience at https://newumpleonline.umple.org.

Umple is an open-source project, developed by over 100 students at the University of Ottawa and elsewhere since 2007. The Umple compiler is written in itself. Umple is hosted on Github, at http://umple.org/code. Umple is targeted at open-source developers, so they can use it in their textual toolchain and develop code faster. It is also targeted at educators who want to teach modeling, as well as to enable students to create large, reliable, and complete executable systems from models, something that is more complex when using other modeling tools.

Umple is also a research platform for studying software modeling, programming language technology, agile software development, AI in software engineering, and user experience. There are numerous scientific papers published about Umple. The definitive paper to cite is by Lethbridge, TC., Forward, A., Badreddin, O., Brestovansky, D., Garzon, M., Aljamaan, H., Eid, S., Husseini Orabi, A., Husseini Orabi, M.,Abdelzad, V., Adesina, O., Alghamdi, A., Algablan, A., Zakariapour, A. (2021) Umple: Model-Driven Development for Open Source and Education, Science of Computer Programming, Elsevier, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2021.102665 . That paper cites other relevant papers. A larger set of publications can be found at https://github.com/umple/umple/wiki/Publications .

Umple is supported by NSERC and is hosted by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.