Rational Software
More info
- Creator
- Paul Levy, Mike Devlin
- Released
- 1981–2003
- Owner
- IBM
- Type
- Software company
The company that put the three big methodology gurus under one roof and came out with UML, Rational Rose and an entire lifestyle built around development process.
It began in 1981 as Rational Machines, selling the R1000, a workstation built for developing in Ada. Grady Booch was there early. James Rumbaugh joined in 1994, and Ivar Jacobson arrived in 1995 with the purchase of the Swedish firm Objectory. The trio – "the three amigos" – merged their notations into UML, standardised by the OMG in 1997.
Tools grew up around the language: the Rational Rose modeller, ClearCase version control via the merger with Pure Atria, and the RUP process framework. IBM bought the company in 2003 for $2.1 billion. The diagrams live on, these days more often as text in PlantUML than in Rose.