Goldmund, wyldebeast & wunderliebe uses archgenxml to create plone content types.
Plone's standard content types are made with archetypes. Archetypes takes care of a whole lot of standard things like display menu, workflow, standard fields like title or description. "Batteries included".
UML is a (graphical) modelling language to describe applications. Archgenxml converts UML into usable archetypes/plone code. A UML diagram is quite readable, so you get a quick overview of your product's structure. Really handy are UML status diagrams to create workflows.
To draw UML, you need a tool. For instance argouml (open source); poseidon; object domain. They themselves use argouml, even though it is not the most user friendly program (half-functioning copy/paste, non-existent undo). Tip from the audience: bouml, which apparently works great. You can also apparently easily switch from argouml.
Advantages: quick; speedy development; relations between content types are easy; workflow generation is super easy. A disadvantage is that it is one-way: changes in python code don't propagate back to the model. Changes in the python code are however preserved.
(Afterwards he gave a demonstration).
My name is Reinout van Rees and I work a lot with Python (programming language) and Django (website framework). I live in The Netherlands and I'm happily married to Annie van Rees-Kooiman.
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