Reputation: 8765

Why isn't IDEF popular while UML is?

I've found out about IDEF just yesterday and wondered immediately why it's not more popular than UML. Judging from documents, IDEF is at least as suitable for software modeling as UML is, but is mature and stable for about 30 years now, as opposed to UML.

Is this one more case of "popular vs. powerful" like all the discussions about "$language vs. Lisp"?

Upvotes: 2

Answers (6)

BIll

Reputation: 1

None of these answers quite hit the mark. IDEF was initially funded by – and created for – the military (mostly USAF), and that is where almost all of its use is.

Furthermore, while the military is one huge customer, it is but one, whereas UML is widely accepted everywhere else. When people hear about IDEF and how it's largely a "military thing" vs UML, which is more of a common overall standard, they naturally gravitate to UML, regardless of which one actually better suits their needs.

Upvotes: 0

Villemos

Reputation: 21

Tool support or rather lack thereof.

What does an architect today do as the first thing when he wants to create an architecture? He selects a tool.

UML published by OMG with all tool vendors on their side. IDEF0 published by NIST with... well, none on their side.

I really like DEFO0. Cant find a tool that properly support it though. I will use UML.

Upvotes: 2

pavpanchekha

Reputation: 2103

Why isn't lisp popular? It's more technologically advanced than any language? Really, IDEF isn't popular because it isn't. COBOL was popular because it was. It was good about as much as lisp was bad. Or IDEF.

Popularity is a social circumstance. As a programmer, I thus suppose I have no authority whatsoever to judge what should be popular.

Upvotes: 2

Brenda Banning

Reputation: 21

UML is specifically an object-oriented modelling approach, whereas IDEF is more of a an all round modelling approach which supports both business-driven and data-driven approaches. The two can be complimentary. See blog post - http://enablealignment.blogspot.com/2010/01/modelling-its-all-about-communication.html

Upvotes: 2