The following picture provides an overview of the technologies involved in the creation of an SVG document from a UML modeling tool.
As when creating the XMI[DI] extension, the starting point is a UML modeling tool to describe a model. Based on this model, an XMI document is created using the XMI production rules. The result is again an XMI document containing the content and, in contrast to past approaches, the graphical information of the model. The document can be validated against the XMI[UML] DTD containing the XMI[DI] extension in order to check the syntactic correctness of the XMI document. Apart from this, the well-formedness of the document is always checked. The next step is to create an SVG document out of the XMI source document. This is done by using an XSLT stylesheet, which only needs to be produced once and is then applicable to all XMI documents containing both the model and the diagram information. Applying this stylesheet to the XMI[UML+DI] source document generated results in an SVG document. The SVG document can be displayed as a diagram using an SVG viewer to visualize the model by rendering the input document. Different viewers exist, including integrated plug-ins for common internet browsers. Thus, it is possible to view and navigate UML diagrams in a browser with a high level of user interaction, which can be designed to be as intuitive and easy as UML tools can currently be used.