After I published a post about SDEdit which is a free desktop sequence diagram editor, I received a mail from Steve Hanov who wanted to introduce me with a very impressive alternative to SDEdit. Steve has created a web service that creates renditions of sequence diagrams, it is completely online and does not require a download. Well, after reviewing this tool, I decided to let Dev102 readers know about it too, it is really great.

Like SDEdit, the UML sequence diagrams are created from a textual syntax and not by drawing objects and lines. Lets take a look at the following example:

Alice->Bob: Authentication Request
note right of Bob: Bob thinks about it.
Bob-->Alice: Authentication Response

You can notice that the syntax is easy and if you ask from the tool to draw it, this is what you get:

This tool also creates diagrams in several styles, you have to see the napkin style:

To help the users know the syntax, there is a “toolbox” right to the syntax text editor. When you click on one of the toolbox items, the syntax which represent it appears in the text editor:

Another feature is that you can export the diagram to a PDF file or even embed diagram in any web page using only two lines of HTML. I truly think that this is a great product so take your time and visit the web sequence diagrams site. What do you say, do you find this tool helpful? Do you think that it can increase your productivity?