Problems getting started

[kebaldwin]

I have a large modular system that I already started building and am trying to use Enterprise Architect to help me design / plan / build all the different configurations.  I would like to import everything into EA, redesign it all, and then spit it back out.  

What I have are about 20 databases and 20 applications.  Depending on the application, a particular application will use some combination of the 20 databases.  To get started I am using Microsoft Access 2000 databases and VB.NET 2003 on a Windows 2000 machine.  I just uploaded the most recent build of Enterprise Architect.  

I wanted to create an EA project for each database and  one EA project for each application.  Then have one "overall" EA project that uses each individual EA project to show all of the components (instead of building one huge EA project).  

Problems that I am having are:

1. I cannot get EA to read the Microsoft Access database schema into EA.  When I try ODBC import, it opens the databases, allows me to select the tables (so it can open the database and read the table names), but then when "retrieving details for selected tables", EA gives me a "unrecognized database format".  I have not found any other ways to write the Access DB out in another format to load into EA.

2. In Visual Studio .NET I create typed datasets by opening the Microsoft Access DB and placing each table on the schema designer (XSD file type) and .NET generates the typed dataset.  I tried to get EA to import the XSD file and it would not accept it.  It will import all the classes and such of the resulting dataset VB file -- but that is 20X more information than I want.  

3. To build the "overall" EA project, I opened each individual EA project, and exported the data package.  Then I tried to import the data package into the "overall" EA project.  EA fails with a "Error: Root package not found at: ..."

I would imagine that EA can do the things I want to do but for some reasons I can't get it to do it.  Any ideas before I give up on EA?  

[kebaldwin]

I kept poking around and found the solution to not being able to import Access 2000 files.  

I am using the JET 4.0 provider so in Enterprise Architect you have to click "Tools", "Options", and then near the top right check "Use JET 4.0".  

Now it imports tables, fields, relationships, --  

Now if I can figure out how to make all the subprojects import into the overall project I'll be a happy programmer.