Home > Consumer Reviews > Microsoft Visio Professional 2002

The newest version of Visio is the first version built completely by Microsoft since the product was acquired. It's a part of the XP family of products and an official member of the Office XP family.

Sporting the XP interface it has features that I am excited about: (1) Professional and Technical versions are combined. You get IT and facilities diagrams and wizards in the same package. (2) You can create diagrams that can export properties to XML. The possibilities are endless: exchange product data with suppliers and customers based on your own product's attributes, export bill of materials to ERP systems, manage assets and get control of total cost of ownership and export process model data to other tools. (3) You can directly scan images or download photos from digital cameras into Visio and use the new photo editing tools to enhance or modify the images to suit your needs. (4) Analyze your web site and develop a complete report of all links. A powerful feature is spotting broken links, making this a good tool for your quality assurance group.

I do not like the possible "gotchas" in the web link feature. Specifically, When you type a hyperlink in a Microsoft Office XP application (of which this version is a part), it has been reported that the application will alter what you've typed, without notifying you or giving you an opportunity to undo the "correction." Not good.

Before making a purchase decision there are issues and factors that you need to consider very carefully. As part of the XP family of products, Visio 2002, like the XP operating system and Office family, will require activation over the Internet once it's been installed. You can bring it up and use it 5 times before activation, but after that it will not work. This is Microsoft's defense against piracy, and at first glance is a sensible scheme. However, if you reinstall it you have to call Microsoft and get instructions. This is NOT a sensible scheme for a number of reasons. First, I travel, and sometimes outside of the country. Calling Redmond is not viable if my system crashes and I need to reload applications. Second, if I want to upgrade my hard drive I cannot simply reinstall this application (or any of the "XP" family applications or operating systems) because when I first activated it there is an entry made in some database somewhere that says this application is already installed and cannot be activated again. The solution is to call and have some unknown drone bypass big brother. What is this going to cause me in lost productivity?

If you need the features (and they are compelling) and can live with the possible web link problem and licensing and activation issues, then this is a worthwhile product. Think long and hard about the issues part, though, because it has ramifications that can be much more serious than I've described. On the other hand, perhaps a wave of good sense will descend upon Redmond and they come up with a more workable solution that shows they care about customers and understand stuff like total cost of ownership and the value of productivity.

Personally, I am passing this one by (along with the other XP products) until/unless there is a better way to recover from disasters like hard disk crashes or upgrade my system without the barriers that have been placed by the vendor. My productivity and sanity is worth more to me than the new features. You have my opinion and must decide for yourself.

Contrary to Emma's comments, Visio is by far the best program there is for organizational or structure charts. Word and Powerpoint take much, much longer to get things to align and link properly. I've been using Visio since long before Microsoft bought them out. I've also tried other programs in various other countries that just don't seem to get it.

A drawback on the current version is that it's much more difficult to drill down to specific shapes/text boxes included in a group than it used to be in older versions.

I have used Visio at school for a little while now, and recently purchased my own copy of it. It is unbelievable how much stuff you can do with this program! If you need to create technical diagrams, floor plans, organizational charts, or even just run of the mill flow charts, you can't beat Visio 2002 Professional. This program will serve all of your charting and diagramming needs (literally). For students and teachers, a version of Visio 2002 can be a lifesaver, because it will make your life a whole lot easier when creating complicated diagrams. For others, this program can help bring a little order to chaos. Diagram your house, your schedule, timelines, anything. This software works great for it all. Most users will, however, be able to get by on the Standard version and save themselves a chunk of money. If you are not in need of as much technical diagramming power, then you have no need for this professional version.

You could easily create any data type for any programming language. Just read the online help.

1. Open the UML diagram file that represents your system.

2. Right-click the UML System icon in the tree view, click Packages, and then click New.

3. In the Package column, type a name for the data types package (for example, Java Data Types), type or choose other package properties, and then click OK.

4. Right-click the new package, then click New, and then click Datatype.

5. Type a name for the data type, type or choose the other properties you want, and then click OK.

An icon for the new data type is added below the package in the tree view.

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you have added all the data types you need.

7. If you want the new data types to appear in each new system model you create, save the file as a template. In the Save As dialog box, for Save As Type, choose Template (*.vst). Open this template when you start a new model.

I didn't choose Visio as my modelling software, I was compelled by the corporate standards at my place of employment. That said, I freely admit that this software is one of the better packages available for sale.

As every programmer knows, all software design starts with requirements. Requirements are determined by defining your users and identifying business constraints. Business requirements are then fulfilled by implementing "features". Therefore given a piece of software, one could derive via the provided featureset who the intended "users" are, and what requirements this software is intended to fulfil. For purely academic purposes I have done a short analysis of Visio in this manner while assuming myself as the user. I will also attempt to identify other users based on the featureset. For the sake of brevity, I will limit myself to the most prominent Visio features in my daily work.

I am a Java programmer, and I rarely foray into the world of Microsoft Visual Basic, C++, .NET anything, or GDI/DirectX. So basically, I need UML support, and some basic OO types to play around with to be happy. The first thing I as a Java programmer notice about Visio is that there are no Java types, and as far as I can tell, no way to add them. However, I do have the option to choose from Microsoft Visual Basic types, Microsoft C# types, C++ types, or Microsoft IDL types.

And there it ends. De facto I have been disqualified from the list of intended users. Who was this software intended for? What features does it provide them?

I have determined two users: Programmers on strictly Microsoft-only platforms; and Microsoft itself. How can Microsoft be a "user?" They are providing the software, aren't they? I think we can show that Microsoft itself is a user of the software because built into Visio are features that are to the sole benefit of Microsoft. Who benefits from the exclusion of non-Microsoft programming language types in an ostensibly "programmer-oriented" tool? Sure, Microsoft programmers benefit from the inclusion of those types, but Microsoft itself benefits from the exclusion of others. The feature is making it that much harder for the rest of us to use anything non-Microsoft.

Now, I sat down and looked through the Visio sales literature, and I didn't see anything that said this product was only for developers for the Microsoft platform. On the featureset, I didn't see a bullet-point labelled "bolster illegal monopoly power". There's no box that says "If you use Java, don't bother."

This product is advertized as a general purpose software design tool. I am neither provided with general purpose language types or a way to add them. I am sure that if I were working at a Microsoft shop, I would be happy with Visio. I can tell from attempting to use it daily that had I been developing for .NET, I could do a lot of things that instead I have to work around. Those features have become useless to me. I will not give "stars" to features not provided or not available, and I especially will not gives "stars" to features that benefit the vendor at my expense. And that is why I rate this product:

NO STARS.