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Change Management and Version Control

Part of the "Enterprise Architect in 30 minutes" tour

Enterprise Architect supports version control of model packages and their sub-packages. Package revisions can be stored and managed in an Enterprise Architect project directly, or they can be maintained using a dedicated third-party version control application.

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Apply Version Control

Applying version control to Enterprise Architect models provides two key benefits:

  • The ability to coordinate sharing of packages between users
  • A history of changes to Enterprise Architect packages, facilitating retrieval of prior versions.

Enterprise Architect supports Subversion, CVS and Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) version control applications, as well as any version control product that complies with the Microsoft Common Source Code Control (SCC) standard, version 1.1 or higher. For example Visual Source Safe or Clear Case.

Model baseline, compare and merge

Enterprise Architect Corporate edition provides a facility to 'Baseline' (snapshot) a model package at a particular point in time. The baseline can then be used with Enterprise Architect's Compare (diff) utility to visually explore changes to the package, its elements or its diagrams at a later point in development. Differences can be merged from the baseline into the current model, allowing you to 'roll-back' changes to a previous revision of that package. Multiple users can thus contribute revisions to a package offline and later incorporate them back into the common model.

Baseline Diagram Comparison in Enterprise Architect
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Baseline Diagram Comparison

A powerful diagram compare utility helps you to visually analyze changes to diagrams between revisions. Color-coded change items and connectors help you to see what has been added, deleted or moved in the diagram with the ability to instantly restore any element to a previous state if required.

As well as comparing and merging changes from a baseline stored within the current model, Enterprise Architect's Compare utility allows you to compare a package against:

  • A file on disk, created using the Enterprise Architect XMI export facility on the package
  • A version-controlled XMI file for the selected package
  • Any baseline of the package residing in an external model to which you have access.
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Next: Enterprsie Architect and SOA