J2EE Support

[Chris Brandt]

Am I able to model and create code for EJBs using EA? I'm new to J2EE, any other issues I should be considering with respect to modelling tools?

[dnice]

Hello,

The answer depends on what you want from a modelling tool.  Most of the modelling I do is for J2EE systems and I find EA particularly valuable because of the ways it enables analysis (use cases/requirements) and design models to be tied together.  Although this has little specifically to do with J2EE it is a useful stepping-stone and is certainly a point in the process where much time is spent.  
In terms of design I tend to design at an abstraction layer above the J2EE specifics.  For example, I do not model  home/remote interfaces or any other of the J2EE specifics.  Instead, I model a service and let the developers implement the detail.  Similarly, I do not model JSPs and Servlets - this is left as an "implementation detail".  I do, however, model screens to a level of detail from which developers can work.  
In terms of code generation for J2EE I find that EA is fairly limited.  It can, out of the box, generate simple Java classes and it may be possible to create your own J2EE related templates but I have not tried this.   If code generation is important to you there are code generators that will take an XMI import and generate boilerplate code.  Bare in mind that although XMI is a standard there are different interpretations of the standard and not everything is compatible:-(  EAs implementation of XMI seems to be one of the better ones.