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Showing posts with label Open Source Software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Open Source Software. Show all posts

May 31, 2009

OpenOffice.org Draw does DFDs

I've been rather pleased to find out that I can use OpenOffice.org's Drawing module to generate DFDs (Data Flow Diagram)? the data model I use for planning web applications? I'd thought it didn't have this functionality, or at least that it wasn't very well implemented. After digging around a bit I find that it does, and actually somewhat better than Excel 97 did. The only problem I can see is that oval shapes only have 4 connectors points when I could really do with the 8 that Excel had. However, the ability to add labels to connector lines is a big bonus and being able to export direct to PNG, GIF, PDF and SWF (to name 4 of the 20 formats available) is brilliant. The drawing module is rock solid stable and very smooth to use, also an A2-sized version of the rather complex DFD shown below is only 25KB in size!

OpenOffice.org DFD Example