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Author Topic: EA's documenation features and templates  (Read 4991 times)

vortex

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EA's documenation features and templates
« on: July 29, 2002, 09:09:44 am »
Ea documentation features

So far I am pretty impressed with EA's features considerings its price. Maybe it has been adressed already in the past, but what I really like to see is more support for (Ms word) kind of templates.
A lot of companies have their own set of Word templates for any documentation that is to be produced. I have fooled around with a casetool called Objectif from Microtool which has a form of support for this, but the package is too expensive otherwise for me.
The package has a com interface to word which allows you to insert sections (for example the section "logical design" and its related diagrams/notes) into a word file. You can add such a section, add your own text, style etc and divide the document up the way you like it. Press a button to synch the inserted sections with the case tool, but without losing your own comments, style, etc.

Currently I dont see a way to do such a thing in EA (other than using extensive copy and pasting), but maybe I havent looked hard enough?

Or maybe anther 3rd party tool exists that could render documentation the way I described it from xmi ?


jaimeglz

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Re: EA's documenation features and templates
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2002, 11:04:40 am »
This is probably not the exact answer you are looking for, but I hope it is usefull.

The best solution I've come across to the model-documents problem is to arrange your project tree (the packages in the project browser, that is) so that every package, diagram, element and so forth is arranged in the precise order it sould come out in the hard-copy doc.

I do not the Use Case View, Dynamic View, Logical... arrangement, but instead I create a package with the appropriate title, which is the title I want to see at the top the hard copy documentation. I also write a small description of the project or subsystem in the "Note:" section of the package. Under this project package, I usually begin with a "1. Requirements" package that contains a requirements diagram, with all formal requirements, and so forth; then I create a "2. Business process" package, under the project package, with the processes diagrams and their description; then "3. Use cases", with use cases, and interaction diagrams under their corresponding use case... and so forth.

This way, when I generate the RTF (right-click on the project package, Documentation, Rich Text...) the documentation comes out in the appropriate order for formal system documentation.

You can play with the RTF generation options, for a finer result, and there are lots of tricks you can come out with to make the document much nicer. But the main issue here is that you should achieve locality of change/maintenance for your model and your hard-copy documentation.

The documents I have been able to produce this way have proved to be excellent as formal descriptions (those that have to be approved and signed by the customer) of the projected system or as guides to the system once it has been build. And the economy of time we have been able to achieve is surprising.

kelly_sumrall

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Re: EA's documenation features and templates
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2002, 03:27:39 pm »
I have been informed by the creators of the product that there will be substantial Automation support in the near future.  This will allow you to write your own documentation routines and add/format what and how you want yor document to be.
Kelly Sumrall

Even though curiosity killed the cat, it still had eight lives left.

vortex

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Re: EA's documenation features and templates
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2002, 06:01:48 am »
Since I consider documentation features of a case tool as pretty important, good word automation support would make me a happy man, and much easier to get the company I work for enthousiastic enough to give EA a try.

Meanwhile I'll just try the suggestion posted above. Thanks for the responses.


Molto Mike

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Re: EA's documenation features and templates
« Reply #4 on: July 30, 2002, 08:50:10 am »
Maybe I missed the point, but i reorganization of EA's output is on of your major problems, then take another look at the docs, where they explain that each package in the model is tagged as a bookmark in the RTF, i.e. you can split up and rearrange the output as you like. No need to copy and paste, no need to rearrange the actual model to fit the docs either.

In build 500's User Guide this is explained on page 358 "Bookmarks".

The main purpose is to allow having a master doc outside of EA, which then refers to bookmarks of EA generated documentation.

Good luck,
Mike

vortex

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Re: EA's documenation features and templates
« Reply #5 on: July 31, 2002, 09:11:07 am »
Thanks for the tip with the bookmarks. It is still not perfect though; if you want to single out a diagram you either have to put it in a separate package or use then guid (not too usefriendly when you have dozens of those) and as you said, you end up with an extra file.

For those interested, the help file also described EA's COM interface, including some example code, so you can access EA from VB, word, etc. Pretty versatile, but does require some extra effort to come up with something userfriendly.