A critic/proposal: philosophy of EA

[fradax]

Hi all,
I'm an italian software engineer so (I think...) I know how to make a software project, use UML, etc etc. I consider EA a great (very great) product, but I've got problems understanding what is the "philosophy" of EA. I mean the way to work with it, why it's divided in Use Case View, Dynamic View, ... or how you can start from your software plan on paper and "translate" it in EA. I've found Steve's tutorial pdf "Application Development with EA" but it's 100 pages long! Maybe a section in EA help file would be better. What do you think? Maybe I'm wrong considering me as an engineer ? ;-)

[frank]

You ask a complex question.  I am not familiar with the paper you mention, but if it answers your questions well then 100 pages of reading is time well spent.

Frank.

[acooke]

it's at http://sparxsystems.com.au/userdocs/ - i'm reading it now...

[fradax]

You can find it in EA homepage too, but that's not the problem. The pdf is more than one year old (02-18-2002) so it might be not so useful... but I think that it's the only thing I can take... What do you think, Geoffrey??? ;-)

[fwoolz]

All,

I think one of the great things about EA is that it doesn't tie the user into any specific methodology.  For example, several methods I've found in the literature (e.g., Bruce Douglass' ROPES process) can be accommodated by EA.

Cheers,
Fred Woolsey

[Michel]

I am a new user too and evaluating Ea for my development team. I am quite happy with the tool.
One thing that annoys me is the example-project.
Why is it not possible, to have a small but consistent example. It should show, how for example use cases and activity diagrams are connected, how a use case is filled in with pre & post condition.
I would realy be grateful for an integrated example.
Greetings
Michel

[Bruno.Cossi]

Hi,

if "software plan" is what I usually refer to as "software design" then the approach is probably backwards.
The point of EA (or any other CASE tool) is not to translate software design into the tool but rather to build the design using the tool (CASE stands for Computer Aided Software Engineering).
EA will help you to take set of the requirements you will receive from your clients, your boss, or that you come up with yourself, and to start buidling on those requirements until you arrive to a detailed model. The final model will likely be extensive, as properly applied UML will force you to realize pieces you might otherwise miss (even though this is not 100% truth). The model will also be transparent to anyone else with the knowledge of UML, what is probably the single biggest advantage - ability to take the model built by one person or team, have the clients to review it (as long as they can read UML), have UML-savvy developers to take it and translate it into the code etc. etc.

Bruno

[Bruno.Cossi]

Hi Michel,

we are creating industry-specific example projects for some of our clients, I would be happy to share, if you are still interested.

Bruno

[JourneymanDave]

Bruno, I'd be interested to see what one or more of your models look like, if you're able to share that info.  I'm still getting warmed up with EA, and have yet to use it from start-to-finish for any one project.  I'd be interested to see how someone else's models turn out, and maybe I can pick up some valuable pointers from it.