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I'm developing a Java application where the users should be able to import the Use Cases Diagrams in a XMI file. But I saw there's not standard for the generation of the file between the different UML tools like Argo, StarUML and Visual Paradigm. So the parsing of the files gets very extensive and I was asking myself if there's some document with established rules or some standard for the generation of XMI files? I don't want that my application depends directly of the others UML tools.

qwerty_so
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Sredny M Casanova
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The answer is No. Though OMG has published some basics each tool vendor has a couple of freedoms. And (for good reason?) they take this freedom to pack their own stuff into their XMI so other tools likely fail. Most vendors implement importers for other tool's XMI so you can get them in. But almost none exports for a specific other tool. Guess why.

qwerty_so
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    OMG does have a model interchange working group that publishes a set of tests where you replicate the model images in your tool and then validate them against a "pure" UML model file (http://www.omgwiki.org/model-interchange/doku.php). There is also a working group within INCOSE that is looking into that. Maybe in the future... ;) – CharlesRivet Aug 03 '15 at 19:56
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    @CharlesRivet Thanks for the link (did not know about it). As one can see, only a few vendors participate. Many others (like Visio which can deal with XMI too) do not. As long as a standard leaves room for interpretation I would not call it a standard (the same goes with UML, to be honest). – qwerty_so Aug 03 '15 at 20:10