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:

As software developers, all of us used at least one UML design tool such as Rational Rose, Enterprise Architect or even Microsoft VISIO. Those tools have one thing in common - they are commercial and thus cost money… I want to introduce you a nice free sequence diagram editor called SDEdit. It is not a full UML design editor, you can’t draw class diagrams or state diagrams, only sequence diagrams are there.

Markus Strauch, the author of this tool, also called it Quick Sequence Diagram Editor. The UML sequence diagrams are created from a textual syntax and not by drawing objects and lines. There is a text area at the bottom of the window to specify the objects and messages while you can see the sequence diagram itself at the upper part of the window…

During the Job Interview Challenge Series we are running here at Dev102.com, we usually get some comments from readers who think that the quality of a specific question is not good. Here are some of those comments:

1. “I hate interview questions like this, as it’s just a race to see who gets the a-ha moment first“.
2. “This is not a good interview question. What does it tell you about someone’s engineering ability? Little. It’s a brain-teaser; either you get it or you don’t”.
3. “Really enjoying the problems so far but I’m a little disappointed with this one. I prefer ‘thinking’ problems to ‘research’ ones“.
4. “Isn’t this an awfully language-specific question?“.
5. “If you presented this problem in an interview and made me an offer, I’d turn you down“.

On the other hand, many readers provided answers to the questions and enjoyed participating in those challenges. Some thought that the questions are very good: