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I’m currently in Singapore attending an advanced session on OPCAT (Object Process Case Tool), a modeling tool based on OPM (Object Process Methodology).

A recent OPCAT upgrade from version 2.xx to version 3.00 also requires a JRE upgrade from JRE 1.5 to JRE 1.6. As of Mac OS X 10.4.10 the standard is still JRE 1.5. Mac OS X users would need to download Java SE 6.0 from ADC website.

After installing JRE 1.6 you need to set JRE 1.6 as the default Java Runtime version. To do this, go to Applications -> Utilities -> Java SE 6 and click on Java Preferences. Under Java Applications Runtime settings under General tab, drag Java SE 6 to be the first one on the list. Your other JREs are still on the system and you may revert if necessary.

Next, having installed (proper .exe decompression) OPCAT in my Windows VM I copied the entire folder to my Mac OS X environment. Since OPCAT is written in Java it would run cross-platform, but unlike previous OPCAT version some minor tweaking is required to get it running smooth on Mac and Linux.

There are four environment variables that must be set manually. If you ran OPCAT installer on Windows, check your system variables and you should see the following:

OPCAT_BACKUP_HOME=C:\Program Files\Opcat

OPCAT_COLORS_HOME=C:\Program Files\Opcat

OPCAT_HOME=C:\Program Files\Opcat

OPCAT_PROJECTS_HOME=C:\Documents and Settings\…

To set environment variables in Mac OS X, you could run command shell and use env command. For lazy bumps there’s a free RCEnvironment utility which allow users to control their environment variables in GUI from the Preferences pane.

I have mine set like this:

OPCAT_BACKUP_HOME=/Users/datacrush/Opcat

OPCAT_COLORS_HOME=/Users/datacrush/Opcat

OPCAT_HOME=/Users/datacrush/Opcat

OPCAT_PROJECTS_HOME=/Users/datacrush/Documents

If this doesn’t work for Linux users, here’s a clue: The OPCAT Java class responsible for loading paths is using System.getenv().get("OPCAT_HOME"). Go figure.

Of course, you’re free to move your OPCAT folder anywhere you want on the system, even under Applications if you wish. I would recommend that you keep OPCAT_HOME and OPCAT_PROJECTS_HOME separated to simplify any future upgrades. Just make sure your environment variables are set accordingly.

A system restart is not necessary at this point, but recommended. A simple user logout and login would suffice.

To run OPCAT on a Mac OS X or Linux you may ignore opcat2.exe file and click on opcat2.jar or run java -jar opcat2.jar from your command shell instead.

Be warn though that presently some paths inside .opz files are hard coded to point to a particular directory, say file://C:\Documents And Settings\... which would cause OPCAT to fail on a Mac with a java.lang.String.subString error when loading such .opz file. This isn’t a major issue since I’m able to manually edit an .opz file with a text editor and fix the erroneous file paths. I believe future version of OPCAT would resolve this problem.

OPCAT 3.00 has taken OPM concept a step further, having improved in areas of teamwork modeling and simulation. While the previous version had an Academia look and feel, this latest update to Prof. Dov Dori’s OPM arsenal reflects a more professional commercial product.

Also, OPCAT 3.00 look and feel blends seamlessly with Mac OS X. Cool!