Three unrelated questions from a newby

[tanja]

Hi Sparxies,

I've spent a few hours with a free-trial copy of EA Professional and Stephen's tutorial, and honestly, I'm impressed with what I could see. I need definitely more time to fully explore code generation/engineering and UML diagram-related features, to compare them against Rose, that I've been using for quite some time - I'm just another poor corporate user  :-/

The first question is a theoretical one:
I talked about your software to a colleague of mine, and we were wondering whether you have some publications about the meta-model and the architecture you've used/proposed in order to build the EA itself? Or, was there no particular model, at the very beginning? I can find some parallels with what I read in "UML Components", of J.Cheesman and J.Daniels, an excellent book on using UML for components specification. Is there really some relation?

And two very, very practical how-do-I's:
How can I display an existing class in a diagram? Sorry for mentioning Rose, but it provides 2 ways to display an existing class on a diagram:
- dragging the class from the project browser onto a diagram (EA creates an object if doing this), or
- clicking a class icon creates a class and one can select from the drop-down menu an existing one, or specify the new one.

Finally, with CTRL-A (select all), no connection is selected on a diagram, just the "boxes". So my last question: is there a way to sellect all the connections (or more than one) in a diagram) in order to change, e.g., the format of the line?

I'm looking forward to participate in this Forum  

Reg's to all,
Tanja

[Tjerk]

Hi Tanja, welcome,

One answer to your second point: an object is created when drag-dropping a class on the diagram. This is called auto-instance, which is an option that can be turned of in the option menus.

A remark on your third question: from what I know, selecting multiple connectors is not possible. There is, using the options (global via the menu, or local using one of the toolbars (default under diagram)) a possibility to set the default connector style.

Hope this helps,
Tjerk

[CJ]

G'day Tanja,

Just to elaborate a little on Tjerk's post...

When dragging a class onto a diagram, hold down the CTRL key to create and put an instance of the class IF the "Auto Instance" option is un-checked.

When dragging a class onto a diagram, hold down the CTRL key to put the class itself IF the "Auto Instance" option is checked.

[tanja]

Tjerk, Jason, Thanx for your quick and useful replies!

I'm still curious to read the answer to the first question from Sparx-team.